


Stray Voltage

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Heterodyne!Sorin FanFanFic [10]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Touching, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-23 01:19:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7460964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Sorin (and Gabriela) meet Velimir (and Militsa.)</p><p>It goes rather differently this time around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ... Yes, I have indeed written a daemon AU for the heterodyne!AU fanfic Adiduck wrote of my own normal townie OC! fanfic. Stay tuned for the daemon!ABO AU next week I'M KIDDING oh my god. What is normal GG canon, I don't even remember any longer.
> 
> Daemons are a concept from Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass/Northern Lights trilogy -- they are an external manifestation of a human being's soul that takes the shape of a talking animal. The animal is 99% the opposite gender of their human and can change species at will until puberty, when it "settles" into the shape that represents/symbolizes their human the best.
> 
> As it's part of someone's *soul*, touching someone else's daemon is hugely invasive, taboo in public, and inappropriate outside of committed relationships, and there have probably been a great many married people who never touch each other's daemon. Daemons can touch other daemons just fine though.

So, they got themselves caught.

Veli settles against the far wall of his cell. Might as well be comfortable for it! Somewhat comfortable.

As comfortable as possible in the situation.

"Ve iz neffer going to live it down," Militsa moans as she climbs into his lap and curls in a loose, discouraged ball of red fur. Groaning his agreement, Veli rests a hand on her back, head tilted to press against the wall. At least he still has his hat?

The so-called bars are columns of rough, oddly strong stone, thicker than he's wide at the waist. Try as he may he can't even chip the stone, and Militsa scraped her shoulders trying to force her way in the wider gaps.

It's not cold in here, not with lava heat radiating slowly through the floor, but there's nothing at all of interest -- bare volcanic rock for a floor, a bottomless hole to crap in, a drinking fountain that's just a bowl dug straight out of the rock that sulfur-stinking stream water drips into.

"Hy iz kinda jealous ov de neighbor," he muses, leaning to the side to look out into the other cell through the gaps. "Vot rates a bed und actual books? Effen got a stool."

What he could do with a stool... well okay, probably not much, but he could _throw_ it. Or hook a guard's neck with it when they come by, slam them into the bars...

... Be really mean and hook their _daemon_...

Sigh. He guesses there isn't much to plan with inside his cell, but it's not like they will let him rot in here. When they let them out, Veli and Militsa will improvise something. They're good at that. Worrying won't help a thing, so... Yeah, he's just going to catch up on his sleep.

But then Militsa's ears jerk up. "Guests, dearheart."

They stay sitting against the far wall like they're not about to throw themselves forward at the smallest occasion, Veli's hat tilted down so his eyes don't shine too noticeably. The gaps between the bars are narrow but he still sees a group of five men coming up, one to lead the way and the next three to herd the one in the middle -- not physically restrained, but still clearly an unwilling guest, if Veli knows people at all. Daemon hidden away and face set on somber and resigned, the young man lets himself be shown into the other cell.

Meanwhile Veli tries to see how it even opens but it looks like the rock pillars just briefly became oddly malleable and allowed themselves to be pulled apart. Urgh. Sparks. So unfair.

He waits until the pillars have been put back in place and the escort has left before he shuffles into a crouch and crab-walks to the front of his own cell.

"Howdy, neighbor."

The kid jumps so hard he almost topples over the stool he was slumping on.

"Oh my _god_ , warn a guy--"

"Just deed!"

The guy tilts his head to frown chidingly at him through the bars. "Haha, very funny."

He's got a lamp on his side, and Veli doesn't. Veli watches him squint, trying to catch a useful glimpse in the dark gaps between the pillars, and takes in his youth-smooth face with the furrow between the brows that's apparently starting to move in on a permanent basis.

"At least he iz cute?" Militsa mutters to Veli, and goes to poke her white-cheeked muzzle through the bars, doing her best to look adorable. "Hallo, hallo. Hy iz Militsa, und dis is Velimir. Vot about hyu guys?"

The kid pauses briefly, like he's taken aback. Veli wastes a second wondering if they forgot that Vulkanburg is one of those weird towns where a daemon can't address a stranger directly, and then decides that either way they don't care.

"...I'm Sorin," the kid says in the end.

It almost looks like he's going to stop there. "Und?" Veli says, leaning close enough for the light from Sorin's lamp to touch his face, and grinning.

"Huh, you're a constr-- um. Sorry. Sorry, it just startled me." He gives in with a sigh. "Gabriela, but she's... not here."

"Phew, dey iz _not_ playing nice," Veli replies with a commiserating wince. Sorin shrugs and avoids his eyes. "So vhut deed hyu do?"

Another abrupt shrug. "It's more like what I'm not doing. Or doing enough of. Whatever. What about you?"

Cagey, huh. Veli _could_ be playing it close to the vest to match, but hey, what has he got to hide? "Saw all dese verra illegal lava clanks under de volcano vhile being employed by de Baron Wulfenbach, mostly."

At least the lack of daemon doesn't make him all that much harder to read; Sorin chokes a little, lets out a laugh visibly despite himself. "I -- I see. Yes, that would do it. Wow, I'm sorry you got caught."

Veli grins; Militsa lolls her tongue. "Thenk you. Vos our own fault, ve still thot ve could play it nice."

"--Oh."

"So," Velimir says, before the kid can get into thinking too hard about Veli being dangerous. "Vot iz a nice boy like hyu doing in a place like dis," he adds, and gives a campy grin, and even doffs his hat, a nice big wave that ends with it held against his heart while he bows over it. (They call it 'doing a Maxim' in his unit. It always gives him a bit of a pang.)

Sorin splutters.

"Dis iz vhere Hy wag mine tail at hyu daemon," Militsa adds mournfully.

And... bingo, laughter. Shy and awkward laughter, but laughter.

"Effen though foxes dun do eet much und Hy had to _practice_. But iz verra charming!"

"I'm sure she would be very charmed," Sorin replies between chuckles.

"Hy iz imagining so," Militsa says, voice dropping into a teasing purr (it usually puts men's backs up less from a female voice. Heh.) "Vot is she, by the way? So Hy ken visualize."

... Okay, neither of them expected a moment of frozen-faced, nervous indecision to a basic question like that.

"Um. Badger."

Yeah, that's a lie. Veli is all set to glibly ignore it and keep note when the kid shakes his head, sharp and chiding (curls fly), with his brows drawn like guilt, and kind of like sadness too.

" _Not_ an European badger, but -- pretty much, that's mostly what she..."

He gives up there, shrugs. Militsa gives Veli a speaking glance. Yeah, okay, the guy's daemon is being held hostage somewhere else against him, probably better not to prod too hard.

"Dot sounds fun," Veli says. "So hey, vot do hyu do?"

The look he gets is suspicious and maybe a little impatient. " _Things_."

"Awgh, hy iz not questioning hyu, Hy don't tell hyu mine first because Hy iz obviously soldier-type." He arches his brows, lowers his eyelids, looks down his nose like he's all austere and researcher-y. "But iffen hyu vant another topic, mine hobbies iz flower pressing und darning socks."

That look was a 'yeah, right.'

"Iz true! Is verra medita... dot ting dot meks hyu brain stop und all."

" _Oh_ ," Sorin says like he can't help responding, "you're telling me a jaegermonster likes being calm and _contemplative_?"

He didn't say 'you're telling me you _have_ a brain'. Veli grins. "Iz de ting hy love most ov all," he lies, badly. "Vot hyu do in hyu off time?"

... Does he lay it on thicker... Well, there has been no disgusted spluttering yet, so.

"Pliz tell me iz making time vit handsome war monsters," he adds, eyebrows wagging outrageously.

"Oh, you are _so_ not going to manage to flirt your way past it every time you annoy me," Sorin shoots back, but his mouth is trying to flip up at the corner, so Veli doesn't even think of taking it as anything but a 'yes, please do flirt with me.'

He has no idea how well the flirting will go down once there are no longer bars between them to keep him harmless, but he'll probably be too busy escaping to bother; in the meantime it's still a fun distraction, and he's been _so bored_.

\--

What Veli and Militsa have learned about their cell neighbor in the last day: he's ridiculously easy to fluster, he's never flirted with a man before, and he has really, really wanted to.

Also, he's not bookish but still smart, too nice -- he started throwing his own bread rolls at Veli when he noticed the guards never brought him any food -- he used to be some kind of smith until the local spark decided she needed him, and he's madder than a box of rabid cats that's been shaken about it.

But, they have him by the balls, and also -- more relevant -- by the daemon, and probably by some loved ones in town on top. Veli is not sure how to talk him into contributing to their escape plans.

"But really, if ve could just figure out how to get de bars open," Militsa is saying, "It doz not even matter if it's not open _much_ , Hy iz verra slender und slippery--"

"No, I _know_ how it works," Sorin says from his seat on the ground, sideway against his own bars, a shoulder pressed to the stone so he can talk. "It's set to respond to heat, and friction alone is not going to do it. Neither is cuddling up to it, breathing hard on it, or -- this is just a guess, mind -- _pissing_ on it."

"Aw."

"It's _lava-based_ somehow, but the surface of the stone is not hot when it happens, it's just warm, and yet it still deforms like _taffy_ , it's like it's taking the flexible properties of lava and leaving out most of the temperature part, which makes no sense because goddamn, there's a reason it's called a _melting point_ , and if I had my forge and some _tools_ I could figure out how the hell she's redirecting the heat that _must_ exist at some point in the process--"

Something else Veli knows about Sorin: he's on the verge of breakthrough.

Which makes a lot of sense as to why the local spark is keeping him and his daemon separate when the daemon would be just as solidly caged by all that stone (unless it's some weird sparky construct badger that can ghost through walls, and then how is she even keeping them apart to start with?)

Viscountess Raduva is _trying_ to get him to break through, and she probably thinks she'll still come out on top.

Well. She's got a reputation as a fairly strong one, so she's even likely to be right.

At any rate, Veli was hoping for an element of chaos to give him a chance to escape, and hey, this is one. "So hyu iz saying she iz moving de heat sumvhere else _before_ it ken burn hyu hand?"

Sorin stares at him between the bars, light brown eyes too intense, startled but oddly predatory.

"... Oh my god, that's _it_. She's -- heat _travels_ differently depending on _materials_ , and -- probably different types of stones, I never really thought about that but it just makes sense -- or maybe she used metal ores to -- but the threads would have to be so _fine_ , I don't -- how would she --"

"How do hyu think ve ken mess it up enough to get out," Veli says patiently, sitting with his wrists on his knees, shoulders loose, wanting to be out so bad he can taste it.

Sorin opens his mouth as if to answer, and then pauses, looks around his cell, looks at Veli, at Militsa...

... Goes silent.

"Sorin?"

"... I don't think I get it enough for that." A short sigh; he leans his head against the stone pillar, face half hidden from them. "Even if I had the tools here, I just..."

"Aw --"

"I don't know," Sorin says, all quiet and defeated, and gets up to retreat to his bed.

Awrgh.

Veli gives up -- breakthrough will take care of that self-confidence problem, likely in ways Veli can't even start to predict. He picks up Militsa and they also retreat to the back end of their cell. Bare, rough and pokey stone is not great, but there's this spot that's toasty-warm and it kind of makes the lack of accommodations not matter at all.

"How doz dis guy haff a _badger_ , Hy dun get it," Militsa whispers, her muzzle pressed in his neck. "He iz so..."

"Mmm." Veli can see the edges of a temper -- the kid certainly responds to banter with a bite to it sometimes -- but the way he gives up is... "Vell. Ve dun know how long she's had him by de daemon. Effryone wears down, Hy guess..."

Militsa sighs against his neck. Veli burrows his fingers in her soft, downy fur and scratches gently as he can with his claws, the way they both like.

He's starting to feel really hungry, but he's pretty sure the Viscountess is going to severely misjudge how long it'll take him until it's debilitating. And talking out plans is out. There isn't much to do but sleep, so he does that.

He dreams he's back home watching Master Carmine work. Master Carmine ruffles his hair like he did that one time when Veli survived the Brau and starts humming the volcano apart. It makes for very, very pretty lights.

\--

If he takes his neighbor's (unexplained) absences for daylight events, this is now the fifth day he's in this goddamn cell. He's hungry enough to vaguely regret he doesn't wear shoes, because he could have started gnawing by now. He's going to need his belt if he doesn't want to end up bareassed and tripped by his own pants during his escape, and he has nothing else that's leather on him.

Also Militsa's voice is good and nice to fill up the silence of the stone, but with the total lack of new input it's pretty much exactly like talking to himself. The Veli part of himself. He tried to banter with the guards this morning but they all just ignored him, which was very hurtful and he was surprised to realize he's actually peeved about it.

He wants to touch someone else so badly he has caught himself petting his own knees four times this morning alone. He's not yet at the stage where he hugs himself but it's probably coming. Sigh.

"Hey, Veli, vot if ve play tic tac toe," Militsa suggests from her belly-down sprawl, without even raising her head from the gritty floor.

Veli grunts. "Hey, Mila, vot if ve don't."

He wonders how long until Sorin comes back. Flirting is at least entertaining, and he thinks he's slowly approaching the stage where he can suggest sexy no-contact games and not get gasped and exploded at. (Hey, he'd do it the proper way and ease the kid into kinkier stuff more slowly if Sorin was in touching range, it's not his fault he's not.) He can't figure out what Sorin does for the viscountess -- he has most definitely not broken through yet, and surely she doesn't need a smith that much, especially one who's probably still an apprentice or so freshly made a journeyman it comes out the same thing. It's just weird.

"Vot about de crack?" Militsa asks, pretty sure of what she's going to hear.

"Filled back in during de night," Veli confirms tiredly. He rubbed three claws down into nubs on that bullcrap--

"Footsteps," Militsa says, and rolls onto her feet to trot to the front of the cell. Veli lifts his own ears, tries to pinpoint the sound. Can't be the guards, this is hours too early...

Single person. Running.

Sorin bursts past the farthest bend. His hair is a royal mess and his cheek is dark -- dirt or a bruise; he's holding some big metal tube against his chest, and he trips in his hurry, almost falls. Veli and Militsa are pressed against the bars, grinning matching toothy, hungry grins, and they only notice when he sees their faces and falters.

"Sorin?"

"--Right. Move back, I stole it, I don't know what it will do exactly," he says as he aims one end of the tube at the stone pillars, words tripping over themselves. He sounds more frazzled and panicked than like a spark in action, but Veli and Militsa know better than to ignore the warning.

For a few seconds nothing happens, and Sorin groans and throws a nervous look back at the passage, and then suddenly it's hot like a huge, desert-dry slap, like opening a baker's oven and putting your head in. The pillars start to go runny -- but they run downwards and only seem to stretch out from the ceiling, stretch the ceiling _down_ onto them--

"God damn it!" Sorin snarls, and wedges the tube between two pillars, forcing them apart. He's wearing leather gloves and doesn't touch the stone directly and he still hisses -- the metal of the tube is already starting to warp.

Veli and Militsa take a running leap through the shrinking gap. Veli lands in a clatter of hooves in the middle of the corridor, and then he's picking up Sorin and throwing him onto his back even as the tube finishes crumbling, red-hot.

"Vhere's hyu daemon!" he snaps as he starts running for where Sorin came from. He doesn't want to break their bond but by god they need to pick her up _now_. He can already hear people yelling.

"Down, she's down -- go left!"

Veli goes left. Militsa races ahead, finds them a rougher tunnel to duck into -- it goes up a bit, though, which is not good. He doesn't know how many meters of stone are between Sorin and his daemon right now but it can't be healthy. He knows people -- he knows jaegers -- who _faint_ if they're locked in a different room from their daemon, and it's mostly in their heads but still, shit.

"Militsa, not that way, there's people!" Sorin whisper-shouts.

"It goes down und ve ken fight through," Militsa replies, all business. Sorin _snarls_ in Veli's ear.

"You'll be saving them the trouble of carrying you to the lava pits, is what you'll do!"

"Oh, vos dey finally decided to chuck us in?" Veli asks as they turn and hop up a counterintuitive slope.

"Were they -- what, you were expecting it?!"

"Vell, iz vun vay to make sure ve iz dead enuff!" Veli says -- cheerfully, because he's free, and he's going to get out if he has to murder the whole volcano's contingent of minions on the way.

Sorin sputters. Veli laughs.

"Deed hyu schteal de ting just to save me?" he asks, maybe a little touched, and makes note not to mention that trying to transport them might have been the last mistake the viscountess and her people made. It's not like he's a hundred percent sure she didn't have a way to knock him out or something. Maybe she would have just opened the floor of his cell to dump him straight into the caldera.

"Of _course_ I did!"

Veli grins harder and squeezes his thighs. "Aw, thank hyu."

Sorin's arms tighten around Veli's neck and he bows his head, ducks under the brim of Veli's hat so he can curl up smaller. "Just -- go."

God but he reeks. Lava and molten metal, the stink of burnt hair, burnt leather. Veli really wants to kiss him right on the mouth, mostly out of glee.

They burst through a crowd of milling, busy minions, bowl several over; Veli kicks a cart upside down and is gone again.

"Oh god, they'll follow, crap, crap--"

"Focus! Vhere?"

"Right! Middle-right -- okay, _now_ down!"

Staircase. Veli races down. He can't help but notice that this is several floors' worth of down, and while they've gone in a half-circle, they're still getting pretty far from the cell. Either Sorin is severed (hah, no) or he has the widest range Veli has ever witnessed. That or his daemon is ghosting them somehow, but badgers are _not_ that fast.

The last cave they burst into is rough, unfinished, empty of people but full of piles and piles of base materials; it's also a dead end. Unless one of the piles hides a tunnel. He looks back at Sorin to ask for the plan--

The far wall caves in.

Holy crap. Those are some claws. They're longer than Veli is tall, he's pretty sure, spear-straight and flatter on the bottom, but the points are like ice picks. He pauses briefly to assess, noting the size of the rocks tumbling across the floor and the speed of the creature's movements, and then his brain catches up to his eyes and he realizes -- even as a long, black nose pokes through, sniffing -- that this is not an animal.

Or a monster.

At least not a whole one.

"Gabi!" Sorin calls out as he wriggles out of Veli's hold. Veli drops him without a word, still blinking.

... This is _probably_ a badger. Though the front legs are more like a mole's, digging hands and all, and the face reminds him a bit of a ferret -- the body is squat and bow-legged, but the muzzle is pointy. It's just...

... It's just that Sorin's daemon is about the size of Franz, the Great Dragon of Mechanicsburg.

"Leedle baby Jesus," Militsa mutters. "Iz _dot_ vhere all de spark went?"

"Dot _vould_ explain tings," he mutters back, and trots ahead. Sorin is being licked by a tongue half as wide as his own torso, is petting and scratching at the root of massive whiskers with desperate relief. It's awkward to hurry them up but the hunting party will be there in another minute.

"Hey, iz great to finally meet hyu," Militsa says, and hops closer, tail floating behind her, to go press her nose against Sorin's daemon. "But ve need to moff on. Do hyu know vhere --"

"I've been mapping the old lava conduits," the giant daemon replies, tossing her head a little like she's got curls to fling out of her face too. "I know _exactly_ where."

Veli presses his lips together and thinks about how hard it's going to be to lose pursuit when he's saddled with something that gigantic. The forest is old and the ground not anywhere near flat, but if the viscountess has air support to pick them out from between the trees, they're done for.

"She's blind," Sorin says, fast and terse like he's used to saying it, like he thinks the face Veli is making is because he doubts Sorin's daemon, "but she can feel the vibrations in stone, she doesn't need to break into a tunnel to know it's there. We can get into the forest, probably--"

And those claws cut through rock like a living drill. Huh. Interesting. It's not going to be fast, though. If he doesn't bring Sorin along the kid is likely to be even worse off than he was -- the local spark won't take rebellion well -- but if he _does_...

"We've got another thing first," Gabriela says, and nods casually back toward the light-less tunnel she's still half sitting into. There's a moment of silence, and then as Sorin blinks in confusion she presses herself against one side of the wall and says, "Go on, then."

A few more seconds of silence, and then someone approaches in a ruffle of feathers and skirts; a young woman wedges herself in the gap, glaring daggers at the daemon as she leaves a noticeable gap between the two of them.

"--Rozalia, oh my _god_. How did you even--"

Veli rolls his lip inwards as he contemplates this new problem. Family? Childhood friend? Neighbor? The main issue is, do they take her along or stash her in a hole?

"Oh, please!" she's shouting back. "Like it was in any way hard to _guess!_ You'd never go up into town, you're paranoid about Gabi in the streets!"

"She can't _fit_ in the streets!" Sorin splutters back, frazzled and off balance, but the black swan on the girl's heels snaps his beak in furious agitation, wings flapping in a threat display that only seems ridiculous because there's this huge badger thing right beside it. Gabriela looks nonplussed, small ears flat, like the swan is actually taking her aback. Veli's eyebrow arches.

"--And of course you'd throw away the chance the Mistress is offering you to save some jerk _spy_ and hope for the best about your _family_ \--"

It's like a switch thrown.

One of those big dramatic switches that borderline take both hands to move and snap into place like gigantic mouse traps. Switches that say "lightning moat" or "anguish dispenser".

Sorin and the girl are of a height, and obviously she's not impressed -- not even when the badger straightens up (and up, and up) and Sorin's shoulders (strong, wide) draw back, straighten from that unsure curl.

"Yes," he says with his voice edged with barely controlled danger. "Let's talk about my _family_."

The girl tosses her long black curls over her shoulder in impatience. "Oh, please, don't even bother glaring at me, you--"

A gigantic hand with gigantic claws comes down; five spears pierce the ground around the swan, caging him in.

"--Hey!"

"It's actually a good thing that you snooped around and followed us," Sorin muses, tone going dangerously light, and then without warning he swoops in and throws her over his shoulder. She shrieks. Sorin stalks right back into the previously hidden tunnel; her trailing hair brushes against Gabriela as she kicks, and Sorin doesn't slow down at all, like he doesn't care she would barely have to reach out a hand to smack Gabriela.

"Herr Jaeger, Frau Fox," Gabriela adds, in the way that is politely not a request, and points her muzzle at the hole.

"Pipple iz coming," Militsa replies. "Ve ken guard de hole--"

The way those blind eyes seem to stare right through them is a bit eerie. " _What_ hole?"

... Heeeeeehehe, Veli _likes_ them. He and Militsa bound forward to follow. The swan, freed, comes on their heels, ranting, and then the giant badger wriggles backwards through the hole and taps the edge of the ceiling. Rocks crash down.

Suddenly there's silence, from the girl and from her daemon both.

It's an old lava flow tunnel, not anything man-made, and the only light in it comes from Veli's mouth. He follows Militsa and the tug of their bond, her cautious padding over bumps and crevices.

"... Sorin--"

"Shh. We're letting you go at the next intersection. And then you can choose!"

There's a moment of silence, only broken by the sound of Gabriela's fur and her claws on the rock as she finds a gap to back into and turn herself around. Her hot breath washes over Veli once, so close the brim of his hat shivers. He still can't get over how awesomely spark-like Sorin's daemon is. A lot of them have unnatural animals to start with, but the weirdness of them correlates both with strength and with pure _madness_ , and -- yeah, considering how mundane and depressed the kid's been, this is a surprise. A fun surprise.

"Choose _what_? I -- Sorin Petrescu, you put me down. Now."

"Choose between your viscountess and her stupid, wasteful, criminal little rebellion, and doing the right thing and going to tell my family they need to _get away_."

"You want me," the girl says with offended disbelief, even as she's wheezing from still having his shoulder digging into her stomach, "to betray my _mistress_."

"I want you to do the _right thing_ and get _our families_ out of the way because _your father's my master_ and do you think she will _spare_ him?! I want _you_ to get out of the way before I bring down the Baron on her high-handed, murderous _fucking_ head, is what I want you to do, but if you don't then I guess I'll just have to _help him destroy you all_ before she can touch any of them!"

There's a brief pause and then a choking sound -- Veli makes his glow brighter, squints. The girl just dropped to the ground; Sorin has a hand on his chest, where he probably got kneed good and proper.

"Ow," he says in bewildered betrayal. "You didn't have to do that--"

Rozalia is back on her feet like a spring, snarling. "Are you _breaking through_? Are you kidding me? _Now_? You're breaking through _now_ , you absolute horse's end, you -- argh!"

She goes to beat her fists on the kid, who stands there knocked out of his fugue.

Veli steps behind her, catches her by the wrists, lifts them over her head. It ought to stop her but even as she strains fruitlessly to break free she heaps more and more incoherent insults on the kid.

"Hy dun mind listening to hyu guys' star-crossed master-minion ting," he says placidly, putting both of her wrists to a single hand so he can muffle her with the other, "but iffen de Viscountess vorks vith volcanoes she _vill_ have something to move rocks aside, jah?"

"--Oh," Sorin goes, and Gabriela says, "Well, usually she uses me."

Veli pauses, blinks. Rethinks it all.

Sorin and Gabriela breaking through is probably a bonus and-or the end result. But he has been thinking that Sorin was otherwise not so useful, and -- yeah, it works better if he assumes that Sorin's daemon wasn't used as leverage against him, _Sorin_ was used as leverage against _his daemon_.

Wow. That's an interesting variation.

"Right. Yes. But she'll probably figure out something else, she's not slow and probably she was doing it some other way before we... Yes, let's... Let's move."

Veli hoists up the girl under his arm like luggage, letting go of her mouth, and she starts hissing. She's been chewing on his palm for the last two minutes. "Hokay, but Hy, personally, iz blind as hell in here. Do Hy hold hyu hand or vot?"

"Und iffen hyu even try to peck me, chicken-boy," Militsa is saying to the black swan, "Hy _vill_ bite back."

Sorin clears his throat; Veli bets he's blushing. "No, wait, I've got a, I mean I kind of always know where Gabriela is but she doesn't notice elevation and pebbles as much as I do anyway--"

"Oh my _god_ ," the girl under Veli's arm mutters, disgusted. Veli grins down at her, teeth lit from behind. She flinches, then glares. Not bad for a minion.

Sorin cracks a stick in two and the ends starts to glow like embers, which isn't much light, but enough to see the holes in the ground by, and they speed up their hesitant shuffle to a fast walk.

\--

"Okay, here's good enough."

In barely thirty minutes they've come across so many crossroads and cracks and sudden caverns you could have fit the jaegerhall into that what's special about this one fork is not immediately obvious, but Gabriela sounds certain. She has stopped walking, nose pressed to the crack that comes down from the ceiling and becomes a somewhat slanted corridor.

Veli puts Rozalia down, either way. The girl bats her clothes back into place, taking a big, deliberate side-step away from him.

"So this goes down a bit, but you guys should fit. So. Here's a light stick."

"Are you even _serious_ ," she says, still snatching the light stick from Sorin's hand. Veli, standing back, is trying not to snicker. Gabriela brought down the tunnel ceilings behind them at least six times, it's not like she has much of a choice. " _Goodbye, have a light stick?_ "

Sorin meanwhile is back to being weary and restrained, kind of like he was in the cell, which is sad after seeing his blooming anger and that set to his shoulders that makes Veli very aware that he must lift or otherwise hit a lot of very heavy things for a living.

He hasn't sparked out again. How the _hell_ is he still holding back? This is called breakthrough, not waffle-through.

"Goodbye," Sorin replies, waspish, "Have a light stick. Did you want a lecture?"

"That's never stopped you from giving me one," Gabriela mutters, under her breath, at the exact same time as Rozalia goes "That sure never stopped you giving me one!", but under the breath of a giant badger... well, there's still a lot of room. The black swan goes flying at the badger's nose, trying to peck it; Gabriela patiently lifts her head out of reach as the swan screeches.

Veli is still working very hard on staying out of it, but he doesn't _want_ to, so he's not surprised when Militsa snorts and jumps, and pulls the swan back down by the tail, teeth clamped down on thick feathers.

"Hey!" Rozalia snaps, turning on Veli, and _there_ is when Sorin's smothered annoyance snaps into open flame.

"Leave them _alone_!"

"Don't you tell me--"

"I'm not going to be in touch, Rozalia," he snarls, low and dangerous. "I'm not going to listen to news from back home, I'm not going to answer _letters_ , I'm not going to know what happens here. Until this is _done_ I won't know." A brief pause, to make sure he has her attention. "So when your viscountess throws my family in prison I won't know, when my father takes sick and dies I won't know, when she decides that maybe she just needs to go after _more_ people so it'll work and picks up my friends and my _master_ I won't know. It won't change my mind, it won't change what I'm _doing_.

"It'll only have useless, wasteful results.

"So you do what you want. And I do what I want. And I guess when it's over we'll see who survived."

Once again it's not really madness, not fury or any kind of really fun excess, just the certainty of a spark that the world is going to bow or get out of his way. Veli has no clue how Sorin does it.

(Or why. It's mildly badass, but not very fun.)

Sorin moves first -- to wrap his arms around Rozalia, hug her, and she's so baffled she lets it happen, stutters when he lets go.

"So… Take care. Bye."

… Then Gabriela picks up the swan between her giant claws and delicately shoves him through the gap and into the slope behind. Rozalia dodges under the badger's paw to catch up, swearing vilely.

"Whoof. Hyu momma sounds interesting de vay she tells it," Veli says. Sorin snorts.

"My mother is interesting in a lot more ways than _that_."

They start walking again. Gabriela opens the way, and she moves a lot faster now than she did, so it takes Veli a little while before he notices that Sorin, who's walking behind him, is fiddling with something.

"... Hy thot hyu did not have tools," Veli says, eyeing the embroidered satchel in the boy's hands.

"Hm? Oh, yeah." He ducks his head, embarrassed; Gabriela shuffles her feet guiltily, clears her throat and knocks down a couple tons of bothersome rock. "It was driving me crazy."

Veli's laughter bursts out, rings far into the tunnel; Sorin pauses to look at him sideways, probably blushing, sort of smiling like he thinks he shouldn't find it funny but can't help it.

"Hyu -- hyu _took_ \--"

"It's a good thing she didn't expect me to hug her," Sorin says drolly, "it's a decent weight, she'd have noticed."

He grins when Veli laughs harder, a bit shy but proud of himself, too, and yeah, it's ridiculous, but also kind of great. Veli throws an arm across his shoulders, pulls him into his side in a rough, friendly hug.

The dimpling smile falls off the boy's face, replaced by -- Veli kisses him without thought.

"--Oh."

"Vos dat bad?" he asks, already knowing it wasn't.

"No, I--"

Veli kisses him again, a short press of lips, and then leans back in slower, open-mouthed.

"Been vanting to for five days," he confides quietly.

Sorin's square, rough hand closes on his collar, hauls him in for a third kiss, one that quickly picks up tongue and teeth, that has Veli's breath come out sharp through his nose. How does he taste so good when he smells so nose-burningly bad.

"Oh god, this is not the right time for kisses," Sorin mutters against his mouth. "This is so not the right time, it is in fact almost the _worst_ time--" he kisses Veli again, briefly-- "and you are a _bad person_ and I was _making something!_ "

"Not sorry," Veli replies, just a bit breathless.

Sorin glares heatedly at him, and then pokes a finger at the keel of his ribs, hard. "You are a menace and I will _deal with you_ later."

Veli grins with all his teeth. "Looking forward to being dealt vith."

Sorin glares some more, and then storms off blushing so hard Veli doesn't even need good light to know, he can smell it on him (he bets Sorin smells good, under the acrid volcano smoke and the molten steel.) "Seriously stop distracting me! It's really unfair, I have all these _ideas_ in my head and you yank me around by my -- by -- um."

Militsa and Veli fight off an epic fit of laughter. "Holding back breakthrough vit our sex appeal, dat's us!" she sings, hopping gaily over a half-hearted flick from Gabriela.

"Maybe you'll regret that when your lungs have burned from _lava fumes!_ " Gabriela growls, and shoulders a wall out of the way.

The heat that rushes out into their tunnel is almost a physical impact. Veli can _feel his nose hair curling_.

"So am I allowed to finish my air freshener, now?" Sorin says, peevish. Veli picks him up wordlessly to put him back a few dozen feet away from the hole, so he can finish fiddling without burning himself with Rozalia's tools through his gloves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Gabi is totally a [badgermole](http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Badgermole). orz.
> 
> (Militsa is an european red fox. they're pretty short-legged compared to american ones.)


	2. Chapter 2

Four masks fashioned out of a single corduroy vest and some badger undercoat later they are in the underground of the lava maze. Veli wonders if it's also encroaching on a soul bond to breathe through another daemon's fur, but neither Sorin nor Gabriela seem to even spare it a thought. Maybe it stops mattering once it's shed.

Come to think of it, Veli is pretty certain that whatever Militsa sheds dissipates into Dust the moment it hits the ground. Heh. Goddamn sparks.

It's not totally dark anymore at least; instead everything is washed in shades of red. Both Veli and Sorin have stripped to the waist and Veli wishes he could also lose the pants; he's sweating like a pig. The masks make it impossible to speak clearly so he makes do with watching the sweat drip down the boy's nice, strong back.

Daemons don't speak with their physical mouths, and Militsa is currently chatting quietly with Gabriela, trotting right between her front paws with her muzzle turned up. Sometimes Veli cannot see her at all for the badger's mass between them.

"... used to sneak up there all the time even before I settled. The lava paths change, but slowly, and you can get a feel for them."

"Iz it not forbidden though?" Militsa asks, laughing.

"Oh my god, _forbidden_. We are so _done_ with forbidden. And where was I supposed to go, the marketplace? Or should we have stayed in my master's courtyard year long? It was ridiculous."

"Dot why de long range?"

"I guess. It kind of just happened."

"Vot _iz_ hyu range anyway? "

"Um. Not sure."

"Liar, " Militsa says laughing.

"Maybe… Three hundred meters? You'd think it's a lot but try going anywhere in a town on that kind of leash. We got so good at tunnels it's unreal."

God, Veli can imagine. Sorin said earlier that they had a strong awareness of each other, and he's not surprised anymore, if they grew up running in the dark, and sending Sorin up into town alone as she followed underground. Most people are never separate long enough from their daemon for that awareness to truly bloom. Veli generally knows what direction Militsa is in and how close to too far by the tug of their bond, and of course they know what emotions the other one is feeling, but... He doesn't know what she's doing with her body unless she's in pain.

"Effer see through hiz eyes?"

"Um, no," Gabriela starts, a bit sarcastic, but her tone changes -- spark interest. "it's fascinating but my brain seems unable to recognize the input! And he _has_ felt vibrations through me but his ability to map them is interestingly fuzzy. Maybe because he can both see and hear, while I was only sighted before I settled--"

She keeps ranting about it. Sorin turns to shrug Veli an apology. His dark curls are stuck to his face. His skin is all firelight and shadows.

He really is pretty cute, it's too bad he's been broken of being assertive. Bossy is a lot more interesting. At least he doesn't have the presumption to treat Veli like his own minion. Veli doesn't mind hanging out with random sparks but there's always a moment where they start to forget, and then no matter how fun it is he has to remind them he's spoken for and they may fuck off.

Veli clicks his tongue to get Militsa's attention, points ahead, arches an eyebrow. She turns her muzzle straight up. "How much longer?"

"Well, we're almost--"

Sudden silence. Gabriela is a boulder of unmoving fur on the bank of the lava channel, blocking the way thoroughly. Sorin jogs forwards, put a hand on her hip, visibly confused; Veli starts looking around for a rocky outcropping to ricochet off of, to get ahead of her.

Militsa hunkers down, trots forward past the lot of them with her head and haunches low, tail held tense behind her, and Veli moves as close to Gabriela as he can to give her more space; it tugs in his chest where they're connected but they both ignore that, the pull more and more uncomfortable until she's whirling around, coming back at a businesslike trot.

She slithers under Gabriela's chest, emerges between the badger and the wall, and hops straight into Veli's arms. Well, _that's_ not good.

"Patrol," she whispers, as Sorin leans in to listen. "Three stone clanks, twelve pipple. All armed. Ve iz not going through vithout a fight."

Yeah. He doubts Gabriela would be swift enough to bull through and keep going.

"How's de terrain?"

"Tunnel's less narrow, no lava stream, but it drips down de walls in places," Militsa says, ears tilted back dubiously. Yeah, it'll be hard for Veli to ricochet off them if he might be stepping in lava. Cripes. "Und dey iz coming."

Okay. "Hyu stay back," he tells Sorin, eyeing the cave wall on the other side of the lava creek meandering downslope. If he falls in or even nearby he is going to lose a limb at the very least. They're several meters away and the lava is dark red and sluggish, almost black in places instead of molten gold and it's still dizzyingly suffocating, even with the masks. "Hy will--"

"They'll have lava cannons," Sorin points out tersely, "and Gabi is as big as a barn."

The kid exchanges a look with his daemon -- sort of, Gabi doesn't look at him, though she turns her head, but her ear tilts his way, and then she nods.

The patrol turns the corner just as she rears up to bring down the roof. Veli snatches up Sorin, presses the both of them against the wall as boulders big like rain barrels tumble into the stream, send flecks of red-hot, semi-liquid rock splattering around. Fur sizzles; Sorin flinches in his arms, a hand flying to press against his untouched flank. There's yelling, and dust and pebbles -- sunlight, blinding -- and the rockfall hasn't finished settling when Gabriela sets her claw into the new slope and starts heaving herself up. Rivulets of lava are cascading down all around her, around the opening; Veli sits Sorin on his hip without a word, catches Militsa under the ribs, and then he bounces through the lava drips and up the slope.

Up there it's a warren of old, used riverbeds open to the sky, a maze without a ceiling, crumbling walls of dark bubbly stone, and when he perches on top of the highest wall he can see a bigger party of guards gathering at the edge of the maze, on the field of flat, empty stone that curls around the northernmost side of the town. Behind that there are low rocks and bushes, tufts of stubborn grass; farther back the slope goes back up, climbs toward the northern mountains -- and finally, _finally_ the woods -- but depending on direction there are three to five miles of utterly empty terrain in between.

He can see more tiny clumps of people and clanks in the distance, waving to each other agitatedly, already moving to catch up.

"How bad iz de burn?" he asks as he puts Sorin back onto his own feet. Yeah, they are not outrunning that. So, best choice is--

"Not bad," Sorin says, but he's terse and when Veli flicks his eyes that way his face is set with dark eyebrows down, jaw tight. "Let's hit them first."

Veli and Militsa laugh, can't help it, bright and eager. "Dat vas de plan! Vait here und ve--"

"No," Sorin says. "Take me to them."

He's not even looking at Veli, like it's a foregone conclusion that Veli will obey.

Well. With muscles and a daemon like that, he can probably hold his own in a brawl by now, cowed shy or not. So long as he doesn't fall out of his fugue in the middle. "Hyu dun have any weapons," Veli points out, even as he picks Sorin back up.

"That's fine. They do."

He sounds grim. He sounds _done_. "Heh!" Veli grins. "Hy like de way hyu think."

Then he kicks off.

The minions didn't expect them to come so fast (or at all); a couple of human-shaped stone clanks are fumbling their way over the first rocky, time-worn ledges of the lava maze when Veli scythes through, whirling in the air to hit their kneecaps with shattering force. He drops Sorin by the fallen, struggling clanks, snatches two human handlers by the collars and sends them flying into the maze. One of the daemons takes flight frantically to follow; the other one shrieks, falls dazed and out. (Bond sprains _really goddamn hurt_.) Militsa, all teeth out, is flowing up to someone's bulldog to savage its eyes, and Veli _dances_ in the middle of clanks and men, surrounded by enemies. It's glorious.

He kicks up the barrel of a gun, grins, headbutts someone in the face; tears a stone clank's arm out to swing it through the crowd -- three, four people down, and his hoof lands with precision on the one hand still trying to reach for a musket. Crunch. Militsa rebounds off a rock, onto his shoulders, launches herself at a bat trying to keep away, and Veli find the man she belongs with and follows his attempted escape, grinning like a shark.

The problem, of course, is that eventually the men realize that clustering around him means he can reach them and they can't shoot him. The survivors spread out -- some running to hide behind the bigger, spider-shaped clanks with the … much bigger cannons… well. Hrrm.

"Dodge!"

"Hy am!" Veli shouts back at Militsa, dodging. Lava splatters the ground in a long, smoking jet. He dances back, spares a second to check on the groups coming to the rescue -- another two minutes and the ones on the left will be in cannon range. Damn. They need to be done by then. Sorin is -- _whoa_ , and another jet of lava. Okay, this clank is going down. He zigzags in, feints, and Militsa launches herself through the open window. A yell, a crunch, and golden death-motes flicker through the rock and disappear. The clank wobbles on three spidery legs.

He folds a leg to finish kicking it off balance, and Sorin yells.

"Don't _break_ the clank!" he's shouting, even as he runs right through the battlefield.

He's lugging one of the big arm-mounted cannons the people-shaped clank had on, arm included; the leftover soldiers hesitate. Veli shoots forward to snatch him up by the shirt, pulls him back in the shadow of the spider clank, for the little amount of protection it offers. (Mostly, he thinks, they're afraid it will explode if they hit it straight on.)

"--Good, thanks. Don't break the clank, we _need_ the clank. Oooh, I _know_ what it was I hated so much about the design--"

He rams a metal tool in a crack on the spider's belly. The whole bottom sags halfway out.

"Hoookay, hy vill be killing people, hyu have fun vith hyu clank."

Sorin waves distractedly over his shoulder. Veli and Militsa shrug at each other and look around the area.

"Hey guys, did hyu decide to vait for de reinforcements after all?" Militsa calls out cheerfully at the knot of them regrouping to the side. "Dat is not any fun at all!"

Also it looks like they learned very little about not staying bunched up after all. Oh well.

He bounces ahead, jaunty, and his awareness of their total amateur status comes back to hit him in the face. Because more than half of these people are not soldiers by trade, they're a militia, gathered straight off the town streets, and one of them is probably a cook by trade, or a spice seller -- because when he panics and starts chucking things at Veli, a few cloth bags come flying out, and when Veli bats them out of the way, claws out, suddenly it burns.

It really, _really_ burns.

Veli flinches back on reflex, and then pushes through the hot, prickling pain in his nose and eyes. He gets hit in the face with a kitchen knife, handle first, and then the satchel itself, and then he reaches the guy and slams his head on the ground. His eyes are watering. He wants to just close his eyes and lash out blind but can't even tell where Militsa is--

"Down!" Sorin yells, from closer than he expected. Veli falls into a low crouch. He's expecting -- something sparky. An explosion? Instead something whistles through the air -- he forces his eyes open a slice and the little townie has just backhanded someone to the ground _using a stone clank arm_.

Sorin stumbles, dragged forward by the weight and the momentum, and then finds his footing again -- punches someone right in the nose with a gorgeous right fist, the stone arm falling abandoned to the ground.

"Don't you _touch_ them," he snarls, less like a jaeger, more like a riled-up spark -- _ooohh_ \-- and Veli catches enough of a glimpse to see them hesitating.

He would attack, even blind, but then Gabriela's voice booms across the empty space like she has forge bellows for lungs -- " _Move!_ " and he snatches Sorin around the waist without thought and follows what he can see of Militsa's tail through his tears.

"--No -- _clank!_ "

Veli turns on the tip of his hooves, leaps under the clank and oh, damn, the other groups are catching up, they need to go _now_ and it doesn't matter what Sorin did to it in the bare minute he had before he got distracted saving Veli's stupid butt, the spider clank probably won't be fast enough, and where _is_ Gabriela--

She emerges from the ground like some kind of breaching land whale between them and the nearest group, and the ground crumbles in her wake, disused lava-flow tunnels gutted open. Men scream; Veli sees some fall, disappear in the rocks or down the crumbling hole, as she keeps stubbornly making a moat around the clank.

"--Hokay good but hyu gots idea for _hiding_? Ken she keep going underground?" Aboveground she is going to get burned at some point, probably very soon actually. But -- oh, right, three hundred meters tops between her and Sorin, crap, that's never going to let them gain enough of a lead to disappear.

"Yeah," Sorin answers -- almost casually but for a strained note, a twinge of banked rage, "I was thinking of setting it on fire."

Blink. Veli's laughter erupts out of him, belly-deep. Militsa is rolling on the ground like a cut snake with glee.

"Cockpit," Sorin says like the bossiest, maddest little General, and Veli swings him up into it with the cannon Sorin is cradling to his chest, hops to follow. There's still a pair of corpses in here; he hauls them out by the collar. Sorin blinks, watching it, mouth opening in shock, like he's going to _ask_ \--

The clank rocks with a heavy, splattering impact, sizzles. Sorin shoves the cannon at Veli, yanks on the controls. Veli leans out of the front window and catches Militsa by the scruff as she jumps, throws her into the cockpit behind him, quickly wipes the tears off his face with someone's forgotten handkerchief, and decides to see what the cannon _does_ , now that a madboy in breakthrough has had his way with it.

The stone ball that shoots out is utterly underwhelming, even if it hits into a bunch of clanks and breaks them open to slosh their lava guts out pretty nicely. He's pretty sure this is the first time he sees a spark that downsizes the previous --

 _Wow_. Did the clank just _melt_? No, that's nothing, did it melt and then _erupt_?

"Shoot in the ground cracks," Gabriela suggests as she emerges nearby.

… She _did_ make them a moat.

When Veli shoots into it, he has time to count to seven, and then a thin sheet of lava bursts up from the ground. Heee.

"Superheated magma," Gabriela says, now aboveground and shuffling alongside the clank. Veli puts the gun down and grins at her, Militsa hopping out of the window and perching on top of the clank to wag her tail like a flag.

Sorin turns the spider clank around, and off they go on the barren fields. Four miles to the nearest cover, and they can't even push the clank to its fastest speed with Gabriela trailing them. Veli eyes the tracks they leave in the brush and loose rocks, eyes the reinforcements turning to avoid the still-spurting moat and cut their escape.

"How serious vos hyu about setting it on fire," Veli asks thoughtfully, an elbow propped on the edge of the window, still rubbing at his eyes with the ball of his hand -- the stuff he was hit with _clings,_ like pepper oil. "Also, how much do hyu vant burned?"

"Wind's from the North," the kid says, head lifted -- a breeze pushes his curls back, the few that aren't stuck to his skin with sweat.

"Fire's gonna go toward de town, den," Veli observes neutrally.

There's a moment of silence.

"Good," Sorin replies eventually, eyes stubbornly set on the mountains straight ahead. "It'll keep her busy."

Eh. There are only sparse dry bushes, some grass. Easy to put out.

Veli aims for the biggest boulders and watches the magma balls break open over them, watches the boulders redden and start to run. Watches the few streams sizzle up into walls of billowing, scalding white, the rocks themselves dance with little yellow flames, watches until the town and the pursuit have disappeared from sight.

Then he sits on the floor and takes off his hat and starts scrubbing at his face with the rougher weave of his sleeve. His eyes and nose are still watering.

Kid's a bit more ruthless when in breakthrough, huh -- and _rowr_ , that's hot -- but it's odd how _mild_ he still is. The majority of the sparks Veli has known -- the majority of the sparks Veli has _served_ \-- in the throes of a fugue would have decided to put fire to the town itself. (And the castle, and their enemy.) Sorin is still thinking mostly of escape, and even now he's minimizing damage. That is some impressive amount of restraint.

As much as he likes that odd mix of righteous rage and awkward, desperate innocence, it worries Veli a little.

The acrid white haze behind them fills the sky. There's no way a Wulfenbach patrol won't come to investigate. They might be better served by hanging out close by, but close enough to signal the patrol is close enough to be found, and with Gabriela… Hm.

"Woods coming up," Sorin says. "I want to fix the clank -- it's nearly _useless_ like this -- I've got all these ideas for what to do with the engine but the legs themselves--"

"Quarter-length on both sides of the joints," Gabriela says, apparently at random, but Sorin says "oh, _yes_ " like that meant something to him and they devolve into rapid-fire spark babble. Veli stands up and stretches his arms, rounds his back.

It's cold in the woods, damp air with a hint of ice flowing down the mountain slope between the trees. After the dry heat of the lava maze it's a bit of a shock to the system, but it keeps his blood flowing, eager to move.

He should probably put his shirt and jacket back on, but then Sorin would probably remember to do the same. Which would be a bit of a shame -- the kid is _nicely_ shaped, his back is a honest-to-god triangle of muscles -- and also Veli is an asshole who finds weird things funny.

Still distractedly shirtless, Sorin finds a stream, moves the clank up across the bank.

"Yes, these tracks are really much too deep," Gabriela mutters, trudging along behind them.

"Ditching de clank?" Veli asks. Sorin brings it to a stop, frowns at him.

"Hm. Yes and no. I only need parts…"

He climbs out, onto a rock and then to the ground, hands already going to the gaps in the stone panels that shield the inside; Veli slips out after him, hooves splashing in the little stream, and takes a few steps away from the clank to crouch and wash his face. It really does sting.

When he looks up the kid is staring at him. Veli smiles, coy by reflex -- to deflect, not flirt, because Sorin is frowning. It's not his body he's looking at. "Hmm?"

"--Nothing." He turns to glare heatedly at the clank's innards, pulling little tools out of Miss Rozalia's satchel; Gabriela sits on her haunches in the middle of the stream and shoos Militsa off the roof, then cups her front paws around the clank, cautiously turns its couple of tons' worth of weight on its side.

"Hyu iz angry at notting?" Militsa inquires. Veli is scrubbing at his face with snowmelt water and cannot see her, but he knows she's tilting her head all cute.

"Iz probably de clank annoying him, Mila," he says, muffled.

"It's not -- it's nothing that _matters_. I just. They burned _Gabi_ , and then they blinded _you_ \--"

Huh. Veli blinks up at him -- it burns less, now, thankfully. "Hmm?"

"--The guy with the -- whatever burned you -- was only defending himself," the kid says through gritted teeth. "You were hardly helpless and I'm sure he felt he had _just cause_ and--"

A tool slips out of his hand and he growls, kicks the nearest rock before he bends down to pick it up.

"And how _dare_ he, that was _cheating_!"

Veli rolls his lips inwards and pinches them to make double sure he doesn't speak too fast, tries not to look too ... "Sorin. Sveetie."

"I know it's stupid," the boy mutters. Gabriela's ears are so flat they almost disappear against her sleek coat and she dismantles two of the clank's legs with slightly too rapid twists of her gigantic claws. Stone cracks like gunshots. "Awgh. Whoops."

"Iz not stupid exactly," Veli says, and stands up.

He takes the time to put his clothes back on. Dang, he's probably going to ruin the flirtations they had going back in the cells, but he can't really let this stand unchallenged either, much as Sorin visibly tries to tamp down this reaction like he tamps down everything else. Veli's first reaction at that possessiveness is a shiver of pleasure -- flattered, glad, aroused, but that's why. He just… it wouldn't be right.

"Iz just normal spark instinct making de grabby hands," he adds, gentle, as he buttons his way up his throat. "Und hy iz verra flattered, und hy also like hyu quite a bit, but--"

"You already belong to someone else," Sorin says roughly, looking away. "I figured. I mean, jaegers. That's fine anyway, it's not _right_ to -- people aren't things to own, I don't even want you like that--"

He reddens, ducks his head. Gabriela clears her throat. "Anyway, pursuit."

"Yeah, true. Okay so. How did it go again."

Veli is not sure that is entirely true -- not wanting to own him -- but the way he flushes from the neck up, crooks him a shy smile, he wants him another way more, at least, and...Yeah, Veli can work with that.

Probably.

It'd be really nice if he could.


	3. Chapter 3

There are three possible passes over the mountains from where they are. They take the hardest -- highest, coldest; puddles in shadows are iced over at mid-day, and Veli is fine, but Sorin is walking pressed to Gabriela's furry flank, the little walking clank he has made out of the engine trudging on his other side like a self-propelled furnace, and still shivers.

They run into robot-limbed bears, which Veli dispatches a little showily (Sorin watches, and then pretends he wasn't,) and an oversized, toothy worm that Gabriela summarily slaps her giant shovel-paw down onto (it goes splat) and a patrol roaming lost in the mountain that Sorin will not let him fight.

"Vhy de hell not?" Veli whispers, laying flat on his stomach on top of a boulder, Militsa on one side and Sorin on the other side, and Gabriela hunkering down behind, crowned in leaves, pretending to be the top of a tree. The lost patrol is bitching each other out -- six people, two to a clank, but none of them expect to be jumped from above and if he started with the middle clank...

Gabriela can't go anywhere as long as they're close enough to see through the trees, and there's a lot of pines here, which means not much undergrowth; that'd be too much distance to hope for. The second they signal someone...

"Quieter plan," Sorin whispers back, shivering on the cold rock, and Gabriela picks up the walking clank they built off the lava engine and some shortened spider legs in her mouth and puts it up on the rock with them, above Sorin. If it breaks he's going to be splattered in lava from the nape of his exposed neck to the back of his knees.

Militsa inches closer so she can be in the warm area too. "Napping here until dey haff left?" she asks, a little dubious, head tilted. Sorin swallows a snort.

Then he unhooks the cannon-gun he stole off a golem-type stone clank earlier, the one that shoots plasma balls. There are cables now linking it to the walking clank.

"... Jah, make a crater, verra quiet--"

Only then Sorin flicks him a sudden side grin, a naughty boy about to do something his parents would maybe not approve of, and twists a lever and shoots.

Nothing comes out.

Nothing comes out but the spider clanks out there come to an abrupt stop, one after the other. Veli can hear little plinks and a few sharp noises of cracking stones, and then a lot of swearing.

"Bertram! What did you do?!"

"Why do you think I did something?!"

"You're _always_ doing something, you moron--"

"--Oh my god, you guys, shut up, the engine is frigging _cold!_ "

Sorin hooks the cannon back on the clank, Gabriela picks the whole apparatus up as stealthily as she can -- it's a good thing the patrol is busy -- and Sorin wriggles cautiously backwards.

Veli and Militsa just roll off, land in perfect silence. Veli catches Sorin by the hips and lowers him down, and then because Sorin's eyes are still laughing with guilty, nervous amusement when he turns around in his hold Veli kisses him.

Sorin makes a little muffled noise of surprise against his lips. On the other side of the boulder people are still swearing and they're not going to take too long before wondering if this is enemy action.

Veli doesn't care. He was locked alone in a jail for five whole days, stuck watching a pretty boy and being unable to touch -- stuck being unable to go back to his brothers, to defend himself, to _fight_ , and Sorin broke them out and damn straight he is getting kissed whenever they have a moment. Veli has five days of stolen kisses to catch up on.

It's too bad his sinuses are still full of spices and who even knows what. He's sure the kid tastes _delicious_. The way he kisses back is so sweet -- hesitant to start with and then his hand comes up to grip the back of Veli's neck -- oh, strong -- startled but surging against him like even despite the kisses Veli stole earlier he never thought he would get to touch a man again, like he thinks there might not be another chance.

Of course that's when a branch cracks and Militsa yips in alarm. Veli breaks away, whirls around, and comes face to face with three of the patrollers, having just passed the corner of the boulder.

For a second it looks like they don't know what to look at -- at the dangerous jaeger, or away from the manly makeouts. Someone's hare freezes in the brush, eyes showing whites. Veli sets his claws.

"Ooooh _no_ , you are not interrupting me _now_."

Blink. Sorin's face is red but Veli can't tell if that's embarrassment or rage. He's drawing himself up, though -- and so is Gabriela.

That's a lot of up to draw.

"--Halt!" one of the guys manages to say, voice shaky, and Veli snorts, grins.

"Oh, shore ting. Ve iz halted." He grins wider, fans out his long fingers. "Hyu haff us at hyu _mercy_."

He glows brighter, teeth lit up from behind. These guys would be a poor fight; if they run, whatever.

"--We really do, we have three clanks and you -- um, just get down on the ground, okay?"

"Would that be the three clanks I just disabled singlehandedly?" Sorin asks, almost offhand, almost _lightly_ , but Gabriela is still reared up like an avalanche in the making. "The three clanks, and their assorted cannons? _Those_ clanks?"

He grins, eyes bright and furious like hellfire. Veli grins back, with all his jaeger jaw and his jaeger fangs, and still feels like he's showing fewer teeth.

"Are you _sure_ , Steffer. Are you sure you have them?"

When he takes a step forward it's like the first slow, ponderous, almost leisurely roll of the first rock before the whole hillside comes down.

"Are you sure you have enough kitchen knives and -- is that your _grandfather's_ musket, oh dear, it's _rusty_. Do try to shoot with it, I've never seen a hand blown apart, that could be so _instructive!_ "

He takes a second step and then a third, faster, and they take a collective step back.

Then he snaps his fingers and the cut-down spider clank swivels its cannon around.

"Less instructive than blowing you all up so I can go back to what I was _doing!_ " he snarls suddenly, and a dog daemon whimpers and hunkers down; one of the men steps back so fast he trips on a rock and goes down on his ass. Sorin stares down at them, lip curling up, still balanced on the edge between civilized restraint and salt-the-earth madness. Veli's cheeks are starting to hurt from grinning so hard. "Here I was, trying the bloodless option like a _chump_. How _dare_ you throw that back in my face--"

"... Petrescu, are you _breaking through_?"

Everyone else stares at the guy. Veli would lay good money on him being Bertram--

"--Hey, Bertram," Sorin says, blinking mildly, _pausing_. "And yeah, looks like."

... Oh god. Veli applies a hand to his face. Not _again_.

"Huh. Wonder who won the bet? -- Um, anyway." He gives Sorin an earnest look, and then gives one to Gabriela, as his Guinea hen bobs her head encouragingly. "You know, people in breakthrough do crazy things, I'm sure the Viscountess would forgive you if you came back with us?"

"Uuuuund ve iz back in business," Militsa whispers up at Veli, coat fluffing up in glee.

Veli frowns in confusion; Sorin isn't moving at all -- _oh_.

Gabriela blinks her blind eyes down, and then gently, carefully picks up a boulder with both front paws.

"That's nice," she muses in a quiet but resonant, faraway-thunder voice, "has she wondered whether we're going to forgive _her_?"

"-- Don't. Don't be silly, your daemon isn't going to--"

" _Touch_ you? Oh, no. The rock will do _all the touching_."

Gabriela chucks the rock way over everyone's heads, past the corner of the boulder, and the last men who were still hiding there take off screaming. The first three also yell, clutching their daemons, and then turn to shout at Sorin and Gabriela -- "Are you crazy!" "You jerk!" "Get him!"

Veli lands in the middle of the group in a clatter of hooves, straddling-not-touching the dog-daemon, and sweeps his arms wide at shoulder height, sending the first three men ass over teakettle. Militsa lands on the hen's back and then hops ahead to track the fleeing soldiers.

For a second he's not entirely sure he should leave Sorin alone with them -- what if he does the see-saw thing back to unsure townie boy country again -- but when he glances over his shoulder Sorin is pissed off and also already swiveling the lava gun down to aim at them. Veli figures he'll come back to find them either cowed or crispy.

He catches the first guy, breaks both of his tibias with a double kick, swats his musket out of his hands and into a rock to break into pieces; Militsa races past his yowling housecat without a glance, streaks through the bushes. Veli follows the tug of their bond, the broken branches, the noise of rustling grass from the fleeing prey.

She tackles a terrier dog; Veli tackles her human. Knocked out. And the last guy-and-goat are...

Whoops -- on top of a rock, a dozen feet up, waving wildly over the foliage. Militsa hops on Veli's shoulders and he launches himself at them to knock them clean off the rock. On the way down he catches a glimpse of spider clanks, still moving up the slope, trying to find a way through the dense tangle of trees. Shit.

"Need Sorin's cooling gun, Hy think," Militsa quips. They could probably disappear those, too, but that's going to take _more_ time, and get them noticed by a _third_ patrol, and slow them down some more, which with Gabriela around is not something they can afford --

Branches break and rocks clatter to the left, only twenty feet away.

They're already moving before the lava comes arcing through the air, splattering all over the forest floor. (Grass catches on fire, more thick gray smoke than flame, a few tree trunks.) Militsa is on the other side of the new lava trench -- the heat too harsh, too dry to cross just yet; her fur would catch. Veli launches himself at the attacking clank, knows she's doing the same.

The gun swivels to aim at him. Militsa leaps into the cabin, and then there's a scream, two, a shower of golden motes out of the window. Veli grins.

"Militsa!" Gabriela calls out, galloping through the woods with a tread that shakes the bushes. Veli waves at her through the smoke, tries to signal to back off.

"Dun stay here! Dere's another clank nearby, Hy can hear it!"

"So can I," Gabriela growls, pointy muzzle swinging around, as Militsa climbs out of the window and on top of the spider clank with the balance of a cat. It's somewhere behind the dense foliage and the smoke, but it has stopped moving; Veli can't pinpoint it --

He sees fire, a wide splatter of it. Going right for Militsa.

Even if she jumps the engine will still blow. And Veli's body is too small --

Gabriela throws her shovel-paw and the mass of her shoulder forward.

Lava hits. She screams. Somewhere far away Sorin screams too. Veli crashes hooves first on the clank, mule-kicks it off balance, snatches up his daemon with both hands.

"Again!" someone is yelling, but Veli knows where they are now.

Fox soul around his neck like a living scarf, he makes sure to kill them all. It doesn't take very long at all.

\---

Gabriela is huddled under the trees when they get back, and Sorin breaks through the bushes alone and panicked, a hand gripping his own shoulder, trying to reach his own back. He's not hurt, of course, but -- yeah, it's ugly.

"Breathe," Veli snaps. "Daemons heal fast. She vill be fine. Vhere iz de other three?"

Sorin throws himself at his mountain of a daemon, presses against her flank; she keens, tries to hold back her voice, fails. The wound is at least six feet across, burned through her slick pelt and all the layers of her leather-tough hide, into the muscles below. It's still smoking, studded with cherry-red pebbles.

"Um," Bertram says, and Veli almost breaks his neck on reflex, not even because he was startled, just because the guy dared to remind him he existed. Militsa is a ball of quietly bristled fur and arched back across his shoulders as she stares down the man's Guinea hen.

Bertram just clears his throat awkwardly and points at the lava-cooling gun mounted on its walking engine, gamely trotting wherever he nudges it. "I uh. He forgot -- that."

"--Vell, thenks." Veli considers breaking his neck anyway. Hm. Nah. Looks like he's Sorin's now. That'll be interesting. He pulls the gun free, tests on the splatters still smoking on the ground, then shoots at Gabriela. Sorin screams, then chokes, presses both hands to his mouth, his face to his daemon's flank. She's breathing fast.

At least the burns won't get any worse now.

"Um. She's... not healing?"

"Too big," Militsa says, ears flat. "Ve daemons iz made of doze speshul light motes, jah? She iz made ov a _lot_ ov light motes. Gotta take ages to pull dem all back in."

No kidding; she has lost enough skin and flesh to make five, ten Militsas from scratch. Veli gives Bertram a last suspicious look -- he raises his hands defensively -- and then snorts, turns back to Sorin. He doesn't know if the last two men ran away or were knocked out or what, but for now he's not hearing them anywhere, so they can go to hell.

"Sorin, Hy iz sorry--"

"I'm _not_ ," the young man grunts back, eyes closed, jaw cracking with tension. "You'd have _died_."

... God damn it. Why does he -- why -- _argh_.

"... Thenk hyu, den." Veli rests a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, for a couple of seconds, voice softening despite himself. "But we _haff_ to move. Hy know it hurts but ve ken't stop long enough to dig out de rock here."

He's not sure she can move. She's bleeding a little through the cauterized wounds every time she breathes and at least it won't leave blood tracks -- it all goes up into Dust the way shed fur does -- but...

He should be thinking about leaving them behind, because he's got a job and a mission to fulfill for Wulfenbach, and a duty to his brothers and his Heterodynes to survive. But you just... You just don't walk away from someone taking that kind of hit for you.

"... Let's go," she says after a second. "I'll just -- the clank, Sorin."

Sorin blinks wet eyes, rubs at his face with both hands, and then he's throwing himself at the gun-carrying clank to lead it under her elbow, so it can take her weight. The stone limbs crack quietly, but hold on.

"Bertram--" Sorin hesitates for a second, then frowns, eyelashes still sticky, a streak of mud and ash across his cheek. "Don't let her know you tried to ... She'd be too angry. Just -- say you ran away, like the rest of them."

He turns away. The man stands there all confused, his hen low on the ground with her wings fanned out like she's thinking of taking flight, but doesn't know where to. Veli slants them a last look and follows. He gives it even odds the guy will try to defend Sorin to the Viscountess -- _I'm sure he just got scared, ma'am, breakthrough is a confusing time_ \-- and never even know why he wants to be fair to him so much.

He's not going to tell Sorin. He can already tell the kid would try to go back for him.

\--

Night falls and they're almost through the highest pass, ice on the ground and in every crack of the rock. The slope is hardest on Gabriela but she trudges on, silent. Sorin is wearing Veli's jacket, still shivering, running maintenance on the clank in movement.

"Ve gots to stop," Veli says. Sorin gives him a bleary-eyed stare, feet still moving.

"We can keep going."

"Probably," Veli lies, gently, "but she sees us vhen ve crest. Better rest now than be exhausted all ov tomorrow, und she knows exactly vhere to look."

Hopefully Gabriela will have healed more. The wounds have reduced by a good third but that's still a lot of burned flesh.

"... We _could_ keep going," Sorin says, but he slows down to an exhausted shuffle. Gabriela just sits, right in the middle of the riverbed and its rough, icy pebbles.

Veli and Militsa leave them there as they hunt for a crevasse big enough to hide a giant badger in. "Hy schmell bear," Militsa has to tell him; they track it down to a cave the river snakes out of, oust it summarily. The entry is narrow but widens farther in. Good enough.

"Gabi, sveetie?" Militsa noses at her face, resting between her shovel-paws. "Come on, iz close now. Just gotta widen de entry a leedle."

"Urgh. Fine. But feed Sorin, he'll drop."

"I'm fine," Sorin mutters, and puts a hand to her flank as if he could take part of her weight.

"Here -- hyu guys get in, ve find some food, lay some false tracks--"

"I've got an idea for that," Sorin says, standing just inside the mouth of the cave. He exchanges a look with his daemon, and moves aside as she pushes through the vegetation, starts nudging the rocks with her face. "You're going to have to carry me though," he adds reluctantly as he looks up at the slope, the gap. Even in the dark it looks stupidly steep, full of old rock falls. "And the lava engine, if..."

"Dot's doable," Veli says. "Dun ask me to gallop, but doable. Vot's de idea?"

"Gonna melt the pass down," Sorin says, exhausted-casual. "In daylight there's no disguising her tracks, so we might as well just block the way behind us."

Veli pauses bent over the little engine, arches an eyebrow. "Dot's great! Except for de part vhere it is schtill _before_ us."

Sorin blinks like he doesn't see the relevance. Veli wraps an arm under his thighs, stands up.

"... If Gabi can't dig tomorrow she probably couldn't have run away either."

"Heh. True. Hokay, objection retracted."

He trots upslope, engine on one arm and blacksmith on the other one, finds them pretty much balanced. Behind them rocks tumble into the riverbed.

After about three hundred and fifty meters Sorin starts pressing a hand to his chest.

"Hyu bond?"

"We're not _there_ yet."

"Iffen hyu sever hyu bond ve vill _neffer_ get dere." Sigh. "Just tell us how it works--"

"I'm _fine_ ," Sorin growls, "I've got to work on the engine _anyway_ , you can't _do_ it."

It wouldn't even be the twentieth time a spark Veli is responsible for manages to kill or otherwise mutilate himself while asserting he's in complete control of the situation, at this point. He exchanges a look with Militsa, in perfect agreement. Another wince and they stop.

At the next wince Sorin is the one who sighs, slumps, tightens his hold on Veli's shoulder.

"I -- fine. Yeah. Stop here. You'll need to melt the pass so even when it's cooled down she can't walk her clanks through, I-- I can't _visualize how_ if I've never _seen_ the pass --"

"Vill be fine, ve haff destroyed our fair number ov passes und roads in our time," Veli tells him gently, and lets him slip to the ground. Sorin sags, leans on him for a second before he can step away and let Veli lower the little clank to the ground.

Sitting right there on the ground, he fiddles joylessly with the clank's innards, shoulders bowed, even his curls drooping. Veli knows better than to distract him, but he still ruffles his hair before he and Militsa go look around for some dinner.

Three rabbits and a hedgehog later he comes back to the kid. He's sitting against the engine, eyes closed, a hand on his ribcage again.

"Done?"

"Mm."

"Hy take hyu down first, vill go faster if Hy only have one thing to carry at de time."

Sorin gives him a look like he suspects Veli of being a shameless liar who lies, but holds out his hand to be pulled to his feet anyway. Veli pulls him close, half princess-carry and half cradling a sleepy child, because he wants to and feels like indulging himself.

"... If you pat my head and call me a good kid... I'm going to bite," Sorin mutters, but lets his head roll to rest on Veli's shoulder. Militsa heaves a great sigh, eyes crinkling up, tail wagging. Veli is glad Sorin isn't looking at the two of them being so obvious.

He goes back down the slope in controlled glides and long, smooth bounces, so he doesn't shake the kid too much. The cave's entry is a pile of rubble and crushed greenery; some water still filters through, muddy and sluggish. That could be a problem, if the dry parts of the cave get soaked. Veli follows Militsa in, squinting. At least some faint moonlight filters in from the entry but it's still so dark he almost walks straight into Gabriela, only noticing the way the cave wall breathes as he's about to lean his shoulder into it for balance.

"Whoops! Sorry."

"Mn. S'fine. Put him down here."

Veli finds a path to her front paws, puts Sorin down on his ass between them; his eyes are getting used to things just enough to see Sorin leaning back into Gabriela's chest.

"Hyu guys get some sleep. Ve iz back soon, hokay?"

"... Yeah, okay. Sorry."

Militsa snorts quietly. "Oh no, hyu iz not a battle construct made for incredible strength _und_ endurance! How _dare_ hyu."

She licks Gabriela's nose. Gabriela whuffs quietly, almost a laugh. "Stop bragging, Mila."

"No, Hy shan't. Hy iz verra braggable. Get some schleep already, hyu pile of floof."

".. You're the fluff... You're much fluffier than...mn. S'you."

If Veli had another jacket he'd drape it on Sorin, but Sorin already has his only one; he's all burrowed into it with his eyes barely cracked open. Veli puts on a reassuring, glowing smile, makes him chuckle, and then he and Militsa walk out.

He eats one of the rabbits raw on the way back up, ears flicking to track all the little whispers of the night. The good thing about mountains at night is that they'd hear pursuit coming from miles away, and what he does hear is just that, miles away. More than enough time to see people coming and make sure they come another way.

The lava engine is ready to go and pretty simple to operate as spark inventions go, especially early ones; there's a lever on the attached cannon and if memory serves him right flicking it down does the thing that makes things cold. So presumably...

"Here iz good," Militsa says.

They climb a little cliff. Underneath is the pass, more of a goat path than a road, snaking through the tall rocks of the mountaintop.

Veli methodically shoots the other side of the gap, watches it heat red and melt, splinter; rocks crack like gunshots from the temperature difference, sending shards all over the place. Veli gets nicked twice, temple and shoulder; Militsa dodges behind his legs, just in case.

He aims at the bottom of the other cliff until it's golden-hot, until it starts flowing down the pass like a molten river. Twigs and bushes catch, smolder, more smoke than fire but the red of it visible to the town, he's sure. They can see Vulkanburg in the distance, or the few houses of it that show over the volcano rim at any rate; the lava mazes glow an echoing red.

"Ve ken't stay in contact vit dem when it's over," he says, words almost swallowed by the odd burbling, grating noise of the shifting rocks.

Militsa leans against his leg. "... Mm."

"Just ken't."

"Hy know."

That's the trouble, he's not sure she does. He's half-sure he doesn't. Sorin and Gabriela just -- they try _so hard_. To be considerate, to pull their own weight, to _protect_ them...

Veli likes his lovers sweet and his sparks terrifying. Sorin cares too much and is too careful not to push, even though he wants to push badly; it reminds Veli of that odd nervous dance the boy does with his own Spark. It's probably better for everyone if Veli and Militsa don't hang around until Sorin really finds his legs.

He might start to demand things, imperious and determined, and Veli likes that in both his lovers and his sparks.

"Should be enough," Militsa says, peering over the edge and quickly pulling back, moustaches singed. "Jah, definitely enough! Eat anodder rabbit und let's go back."

"Yes, ma'am," Veli says, rolling his eyes, and gets another rabbit from where he tied it to his belt. It's even odds whether the viscountess will send a recon team up here or just send people to the other side of the mountains via the other passes or maybe a flying machine of some sort, but the cave is just far enough and Gabriela's trail cut off by enough tumbling, burning rocks that they shouldn't run into it too easily. He makes note to burn some more woods -- they're too wet to catch much but it would help hide the rest of the tracks, make it look like they went through the pass -- and settles against the toasty-warm engine to eat his second rabbit.

\--

It's closer to dawn than midnight when he finally gets back to the cave. The water level has risen, but not to the point it's reaching Gabriela yet, and he figures it's cold enough it would wake her up immediately. The cave itself is damp and cool, not as harsh as the outside wind that comes down from the top. He plops the engine as near to Sorin as he can without touching either of Gabriela's paws. It feels a little odd being almost surrounded by someone else's daemon, so close to making contact -- risky. Almost shocking.

He doesn't shock easily.

"... Militsa, hyu ken't do that," he says when she burrows unceremoniously under Gabriela's armpit, tucked against her ribs, and turns so that only her muzzle peeks out.

"Ken und _deed_ ," she mutters stubbornly, knowing he can't extract her without making contact.

Knowing he really wishes he could cuddle up, too. The jerk.

He sits against the wall and sighs, enjoying the echo of body-warmth he can feel through her, Gabriela's slow, deep breaths, her enveloping presence. He wants Milosh throwing an arm across his shoulders right now, patting him just because, Dario leaning against his back without warning like he's asking for a piggyback (more like asking for a beating), Athanasi's shoulder bumping into his. The skin hunger is so sudden and so raw, he has to look away.

"... Sorry," Militsa whispers. Veli shakes his head.

It's alright like this. It's almost as good as having it himself. (Only everyone also knows daemons act on their feelings and their whims, reason and politeness be damned, and it's not odd the way it would be odd for him to cuddle up to a sleeping man, without having asked first.)

They doze until morning and a passing squad wake them up, and then they wait to be found, but the squad leaves again, so they go right back to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what sorin/veli fic of mine would be complete without a porn chapter. orz

"... Time is it...?"

"Mngh. Early. Schleep."

"... You're cuddling the engine, Velimir."

"It luffs me. _Schleep_."

He hears a faint snicker, which would gladden his heart if he wasn't trying to sleep. He waves a hand over his shoulder like Sorin is a bothersome fly, and burrows under and around the little clank again.

He hears feet shuffling over pebbles, a few splashes, Sorin making his way out of the cave, tinkling water --

... Goddamn, now he wants to pee too. Urgh. Okay, he's awake, he's awake.

Gabriela's muzzle is pointed at him, and she snorts quietly when he turns to face her, then lifts her elbow from the ground and nudges at Militsa, who burrows deeper in the warmth of her body.

"Hokay," Veli capitulates, "Mila, iffen hyu leave her alone Hy let hyu lick de hedgehog Hy is gonna roast on dis here lava engine."

Militsa's red head pops out. "Ooh, roast hedgehog juices. Hokay, fine, fine."

"Huh," Gabriela says, inclining her massive head. " _Can_ you eat? I remember I tried it, before I settled, and it never seemed to want to go _in_ me."

"Just gotta be more stubborn den de meat! ... But no, iz mostly taste, Hy still gotta schpit it out."

"Und _hy_ haff got to _pee_ , so if hyu gurls could _stop chattering_."

Militsa sneaks him a considering look, mostly to make Gabriela chuckle, and regretfully climbs to her feet to follow him. They cross paths with Sorin on the way out.

When they come back he's peering at his daemon's wounds -- much reduced, but Veli expected them to be gone and they're not. Worse, when Sorin presses cautiously around them some parts of her hide look -- impossibly -- inflamed, swollen.

"... Does she still haff stone in dere?" Crap, Veli was hoping -- perhaps a bit foolishly -- that it would just be pushed out.

Sorin grunts, scowling uneasily as he squints, then tries to dislodge a cooled pebble imbedded in her skin, and flinches in reflected pain before he can get it out.

"... Hy ken do it," Militsa offers quietly. "Mine teeth und claws iz sharp."

"I... Yeah."

She goes to clean her paws in the growing pool; Veli carries her and her wet paws back, and Gabriela rolls onto her side; Militsa climbs her like a boulder and then Veli and Sorin can't see what they're doing anymore, which might be just as well considering how Sorin keeps flinching.

"Hey," Veli says, bumping their shoulders together, "let's haff breakfast."

He was right: the lava engine grills meat beautifully, and the herbs he found are awesome with it.

Sorin still twitches from time to time but the rest of the time he's too busy stuffing his face and moaning in delight to fret about what's happening to his daemon. Veli watches him more than he eats, himself, entertained. A spark in breakthrough can put away as much food as any jaeger and it's pretty funny to watch such a well-raised boy descend from careful nibbling to borderline pushing his face into a slab of meat with both bare hands.

"Hasn't even got any salt and it's _still_ delicious," he moans. Veli clears his throat. Well. Yes. "Gotta be a trick -- maybe this is similar to -- mmph -- to smoking meat -- no, there's still some juice --"

He licks a trail off his wrist. Veli looks elsewhere.

"So!" he says, as a cunning distraction. "De viscountess' people came und went, und found nothing. Now dey iz looking on de odder side ov de mountain. Ve gots lots of choices for escape routes now. Vhere's de nearest town in this direction though?"

"Um. Not sure. All the roads from Vulkanburg go east and south."

Yeah, with mountains like these in the way, Veli gets why.

They discuss possible plans, draw maps in the dust, and Veli makes a concerted effort to keep Sorin distracted, and to resist his own temptation to look, to try to follow what his daemon is doing. Split attention is a thing but it's strange to force it for long.

He thinks Militsa has been opening the closed-over skin with her teeth. It's what he'd do, himself. Sorin looks a little white around the mouth.

Sorin looks down at his meat juice-streaked hands -- juice, grime, and old blood -- and winces. "I... think I'm going to wash up a little. I can't clean her up if I'm this gross."

For a jaeger this is not so bad, but humans are a lot more fussy about that kind of stuff. "Goot plan," he agrees placidly, mostly to keep Sorin distracted.

"--Ack, cold."

"It _iz_ a mountain stream," Veli points out, amused.

Sorin has pulled off Veli's jacket and his own vest and is trying to wash up to his elbows, making faces. " _Thank_ you, General Obvious, _sir_ ," he shoots over his shoulder.

"Eyuck. Iz _Corporal_ Obvious, thenk hyu very much."

Well, maybe it won't be so bad if Sorin does clean up. Right now he's covered in dried mud and ash and sweat-glued dust that's leaving rivulets on his skin, and it's gonna get into his scratches and get him infected, Veli is pretty sure; humans are so fragile.

It's been over eighteen hours and he's not sure his sinuses have healed at all. What _were_ those spices.

"Hyu know, iffen hyu turn de heat down on hyu cannon ting a leedle bit, hyu could _heat_ de water instead of boiling it. Und iz enough water even Gabriela could wash, if she wants."

Sorin pauses, taken aback, then laughs a little. "It cooks your meals, it heats your bath."

"It's a crutch in your hour of need," Gabriela adds, voice still a bit strained but more cheerful underneath, "a rock reshaper when feeling artistic, I bet you could also use it to bludgeon your enemies -- is there anything it _won't_ do? We should patent it."

"Apart from the fact that it's still seventy percent stolen scientific principles in a hundred percent stolen casing, yeah, sure."

Sorin stands, goes to fiddle with the gun with a new spring in his steps -- his eyes are gleaming a little. He's humming under his breath as he works, almost a little song. "Alright, and now -- this -- we don't want any steam cloud, it would be odd, then we'd have to make a cloud gun to hide the steam, then -- ooh, a _storm_ gun, wonder if that's possible -- wonder how weather _starts_? I mean lightning is pretty easy to figure out and if you have metal you can control it somewhat, but how do you control clouds? If it's too dry around, wouldn't they just disperse... How to keep them contained -- hmm, hmmmmm -- oh, right, I was stopping the steam _here_. Gabi? Ideas?"

She rolls onto her belly and Militsa jumps off her, trots smartly to Veli -- Gabriela's wounds are still open, but cleaner-looking now, and Sorin will have an easier time getting to the last of it in hot water, at any rate.

Sorin and Gabriela fiddle. Veli pets his daemon, Militsa grooms her human. They watch.

The sudden heat of the water can be felt in the air, hot dampness that's strange after the cave cool. Veli climbs to his feet, goes to push a couple of boulders in the way, so the heat doesn't all flow out, alongside some fog -- he really has to put his back into it, urgh. He adds some branches that Gabriela broke coming in yesterday over the hole and then it's dim inside with the light filtered through the leaves, blurry from the steam.

When he turns around the water is three times as high -- Gabriela is settling in, eyes closed in contentment -- and Sorin is shirtless, sitting on a rock to pull off his boots.

He looks up at Veli and then from one second to the next he's blushing hot, looking away.

It's like a punch to the belly, from the inside. Veli's ears flick straight up, his spine unrolls from his usual slouch; Militsa's head lifts in interest, tail slowly starting a wag.

He... said they were getting too attached. He said that.

Jaegers don't wash much, anyway. And it's not like he was invited. (By that shy look, that blush, by--) He turns away politely, so that Sorin can get in the water without being stared at.

The splashing water is just a little bit of a torture. Militsa is looking on, the jerk, with that hunting stillness to her that he's trying to bleed out of his shoulders, the set of his ears. Veli sighs, massages the back of his neck, cracks it just for something to do.

"Hyu in?"

"Mm."

The sigh comes out more pleasure than agreement. Awgh. So unfair. He turns around -- Sorin has found a crack to submerge himself to the chin, and the water is white with minerals, cloudy; there's very little to see. Veli moves closer to sit on a rock, wrists loose as they rest on his knees.

"Bet hyu iz all stiff from running since yesterday, iz hyu not?"

"Yeah. Wow. Sleeping on the ground, too, that wasn't great. Heck, even the bed in that cell wasn't great..."

Okay, now his face is darkening into a frown. Noooo no no no, Veli is _not_ having that, not when the kid was just relaxing. "Hy bet Hy vould haff made it more comfortable," he says, and waggles his eyebrows shamelessly. Sorin splutters.

"Are you saying your muscles are _soft_?" Gabriela inquires, pushing herself up and submerging again so that the water laps up to Veli's hooves. Militsa dances back, yips in mock outrage.

" _Hy_ iz soft! Mine Veli iz vun rock pillar, iz vot he iz."

"So..." Sorin says, tentative but amused, "I was better off alone after all."

"... Demn."

They smile at each other. Veli can't help himself, even though he's thinking he was supposed to cut back on getting attached, on getting Sorin attached to him; this is silly and pointless, and for what, a couple hours of physical gratification? Flirting is fine to make him feel better, but...

"... Iz good iffen hyu guys feel better. Got any more rocks to dig up, Miz Gabi?"

"Uh." She blinks, taken aback. "Probably some."

Sorin deflates a little, turns to her. "Yeah, okay, turn on your side a bit, I'll check."

He spends the next ten minutes running his hands gently over the last wounds, brushing pebbles away. Veli watches black hair sticking to the golden-tan nape of his neck, his wet shoulders when they emerge, the line of his spine.

He makes sure to be looking elsewhere whenever Sorin glances over his shoulder, but Sorin doesn't do that, much.

Kind of makes sure to keep his back turned, in fact, his hands studiously busy on his daemon's hide. It's got to be deep where he's standing if Gabriela is more than halfway submerged, even though Veli is sure she's actually wedging her flank in a hole, and...

"What will you do, once it's over?" Sorin asks, his back still turned, too casual by half.

"... Ah."

 _Not be with you_ , he doesn't say.

"Go back to mine squad. Get handed missions, fight. Drink vith mine brothers." He shrugs, tilts the brim of his hat down to hide his eyes. "Same as alvays."

"Business as usual, huh?"

He sounds a little sad, but he doesn't sound surprised.

"... Vot about hyu?"

"Well, I -- well." A sigh, and then a too-casual shrug, once again. Gabriela rolls so that she's once again on her stomach -- in a defensible position. "Even if the Baron removes Raduva from power I don't think I can just... I can't really go back to being a blacksmith apprentice like this, can I? I get distracted over everything, even though it's all just _rocks_ I don't _care_ about, and wood I care about even _less_. Going back to metals is -- I'm not going to be able to do the _work_."

"Dot iz certainly going to be true for de next couple years," Veli says gently, "but hyu ken still work in a forge. Doesn't inventing new tings sound fun?"

"... Yeah, but it's not -- not what I was supposed to do." A sigh. "Not what my family counts on me to do. Without the apprenticeship money--"

" _Um_ , iffen hyu keep being so disgustingly reasonable, hyu vill make a ton of practical stuff dot normal pipple ken use easy, und den hyu iz gonna be _rich_ ," Militsa interrupts. "Hyu family vill vant hyu to be happy making fun schtuff, von't dey?"

Sorin looks back, blinking. "--Oh. Oh, yeah. I... Probably, yeah."

"So hyu see! Iz goot."

"... Well, that part isn't bad," he concedes, looking a little cheered up. "Still, the neighbors will hate me for ousting her, and my master can't exactly take me back if I'm going to try to fiddle with the customers' orders because I had a better idea. Like Herr Weber and his stupid _clock_ that we've fixed _twice_ , I don't know who made it but -- ow, sorry Gabi."

"Could take hyu family und move out?"

Oh, that wistful look. "Can't, Father's sick, he can't really travel and he needs warm air."

... Yeah, they would definitely see each other around, which would not be good for Veli, but. "Hire on vith de Baron, den. Castle Wulfenbach goes really high und de temperature inside still stays all nice und mild all year. Und Hy hear he gots pretty nice doctors. At worst, hyu schtay a couple years un den move out vhen iz above Greece or sumting."

"Oh." He pauses, turned halfway toward Veli, floating with his hand on Gabriela's flank. Eyes vague, thoughtful. Gabriela turns her head toward him.

"Sounds like the best choice for now..."

"For _us_ , yes. What about Ludy's school and Mother's job, and their _friends_..."

"They'd probably come if we asked..."

"...But should we even ask, is the question."

They sigh together. Water laps at Veli's hooves again from Gabriela's heaving flanks.

"How is it anyway, working for the Baron?" she asks after a brief moping moment.

Militsa shrugs, flicks her ears. "Iz not bad aktuelly, he giff fair pay und detailed instructions."

"Mm."

"... Not good enuff?" Veli asks quietly, watching Sorin's glum face.

"I just don't know how well I'm going to enjoy dealing with another spark's rules and regulations, I mean, even if they're all very logical and fair..." He throws up a hand in sudden frustration. "I was in prison for four months! Because she had decided she got to _draft_ me! Because she thought she could mold me into her _perfect assistant_! And even before that it was oh let's have a _curfew_ , and the second Gabi settled it was oh let's have new laws about the maximum size of daemons in public thoroughfares, like I was too stupid or selfish to figure it out, like I needed _ordered_ \--"

Pff, sparks. No, yeah, that would grate eventually, Veli supposes. He's personally easygoing enough it would slide off his back -- not that he wouldn't also decide to sneak in a bit of petty revenge to annoy them right back. Sorin sadly doesn't seem to be the type to enjoy the old adage, "don't get angry, get even." He's more the type to swallow it all until he explodes and takes out the whole neighborhood.

"Hy dun tink de Baron vill put hyu in prison for escaping dot und going to tell him about de rebellion ting... Though in de interest ov fairness und transparency he probably _vill_ put watchers to hyu until hyu gots hyu Spark under control und he ken trust vot hyu iz doing vith it."

Even Gabriela glares, and she's blind. Veli can't help but laugh.

"De Baron iz not so bad, really. Harsh but fair, vot, und he treats us constructs right." He shrugs, shoulders loose. "Hy dun mind vorking for him."

If he can't have his town and his Heterodynes, it's not the worst thing to waste time on, or the worst person to do it for.

"You don't love it either," Sorin observes quietly, submerged to the chin.

"Iz not becuz ov him," Veli answers simply. "Vould be de same vith anyvun else, iz not personal."

There's a moment of quiet.

The relationship with Klaus Wulfenbach is not personal -- or only personal by proxy. Which is good because if he tried to make it more between him and the Jaeger corps, they would tear him into bite-sized pieces and then chew those up and shit them out to make sure no power on Earth can sew him back together again. But at the same time...

It's lonely.

"What's it like," Sorin asks, quiet enough it's almost melancholy, "when it _is_ personal?"

"Hyu mean, being in loyalty vith a spark."

"... Mmm." Sorin sighs, props both arms and his chin on a rock, turned to face them. "I mean, I don't need to understand it to accept that you feel it, but... I've never been able to understand it. I see even people stubborn and opinionated as hell who still want nothing more than to follow someone else, and just..."

Veli chuckles, more out of sympathy than amusement. "Hyu veird guy."

"--Hey."

"Vell, iz not maybe so surprising, hyu only broke through -- whoa, vot's dis, hyu iz _still_ breaking through -- but hyu vos gonna be a spark all hyu life."

Sorin blinks, nonplussed. "Well -- I guess."

"At de same time, sumtimes sparks do fall in loyalty for odder sparks, so it ken yet happen to hyu!" He waggles his eyebrows, trying to inject some playfulness into the discussion. "Dun despair. Vun day sum madboy shows hyu hiz beeg mouse cannon und--"

"If you don't stop it with the accent I'm going to stuff a rock in your mouth."

Veli makes sure to make his eyelids extra-glowy for his innocent blink. "Hy haff no hydea vot hyu iz effen talkink about!"

"Also," Militsa adds innocently, "Hy ken talk fur heem?"

"And I can put you in my mouth whole," Gabriela returns, ears flicking backwards doubtfully.

Veli and Militsa are sure she meant it as a threat, a way to silence her. Veli chokes, presses a hand to his mouth, then gives up and laughs into it; Sorin scowls in confusion for two seconds and then turns a brilliant scarlet, splashes water at the two of them even as he turns around to hide his face.

"Oh my god. Shut up. No. Shut up."

"I did _not_ mean it like that!"

"Brekkink mine _heart_ ," Militsa intones. Veli nudges her with his hoof before she can slip innuendos about Gabriela's oversized tongue into the conversation. He thinks Sorin and Gabriela might well just expire on the spot.

... He's so cute, face red from embarrassment and hot water, sinking to his chin to glare with his hair licking at his forehead and cheeks in black tangles.

(Yeah, also Veli is very much aware he's either naked or in wet, clingy smallclothes under there.)

"If you just didn't want to answer the question that's fine, but _tell_ us that's what it is," Gabriela says, hunkering down as well -- in awkwardness or rejection Veli doesn't know. It makes the water level rise, pool around Veli's hooves, up to his ankles; he leans to the side to pull up Sorin's abandoned pants, hanging a bit too low off the rock they're on. He's aware Gabriela and Sorin are only going to take the delay as confirmation.

"Gabi," Sorin murmurs, "it's fine if they don't -- just, let it go."

Veli sighs, leans back onto his hands; Militsa sits in the water, ears and muzzle drooping a little, tail slowly soaking through.

"Loyalty iz... Iz dis person dat's going somewhere new und exciting, und dey say -- Hy vant hyu to come vith me. To see it all vith me. It vill be _awesome_. De best sparks, de vuns hyu _keep_ , it's like dey say, iz something new and special and marvelous, but it vill mean _more_ to me if hyu come. Hyu _especially_."

"Oh."

The look on his face... Intense, a little distressed... "Hyu never felt even a _touch_ of dat vith de viscountess, huh."

"Well maybe if she was leading in the right direction!" Sorin snaps back.

Veli snorts, makes zero effort to make it discreet.

"... Yeah, alright, probably not even then."

Veli and Militsa shake their heads in mock despair. "Dot's just valking de same way, sveethart," Militsa says. Sorin colors some more, looks a bit-- oh, right, have to watch the endearments too.

Have to watch everything. He is really bad at this 'pretending not to like people as much as he does' thing; it'd be easier if he didn't like Sorin at all, he could play friendly all month long.

Sorin sighs quietly, glances at Gabriela, who flicks an ear and otherwise stays quiet, listening, not letting any of her thoughts show out.

 _It's okay if I don't get it_ , he's going to say, Veli can tell, and give up.

"De goot ones, dey dun cherish hyu like an equal, not like a normal friend," he says quietly, weighing the words, trying to shape the heart of it, "though hyu ken also be friends outside ov it sumtimes -- but dey still cherish hyu. Dey vant hyu because dey see sumting dey like, be it a personality trait or a useful skill or... sum kind ov fondness because hyu remind dem of a childhood _pet_ , votever -- but hyu still belong to dem, because dey tink hyu iz _worth sumting_."

"... Hm."

That's still not -- not enough, not deep enough, what is Sorin _missing_ there, he doesn't know...

"Mine sparks," he starts, and then has to pause for a second, to look down at the water lapping around his hooves, to feel the loosening heat of it. "... Mine sparks. Mine Heterodynes."

"Veli, you really don't _have_ to tell me."

Oh god, that quietly sad face, that need to find-fix the issue, barely restrained. "Aktuelly dis is exactly vhy Hy haff to tell hyu," Veli retorts with a little smile, making Sorin's eyebrows quirk in bafflement.

Okay. He can do this.

"Mine masters haff spent centuries building a ting -- a town, a society -- where ve iz _never on our own_. Ve iz strange und scary und iz still _home_ , und people iz still proud ov us. De masters vill take us on adventures und wars, und ve luff wars, und dey vill giff us a town to defend dot loves us back, und iffen ve fall, if ve _fail_ \-- dey vill come for us, dey vill destroy whoever hurt us, und dey vill either avenge us or fix us _better_.

"Sum ov de masters vos better at some tings -- at de finding fun wars, or at de caring -- und sum vos not much good at all, but de system de _family_ built -- it vould last generations. Haz lasted generations. Everything else dey built as a dynasty vos stolen back or destroyed or dey got bored vit it, but de town -- de place ov all deir people in de town -- dot never has." He shakes his head. "Never will."

"Okay," Sorin says, very quietly. "This part I get." A deep breath, and then he smiles. "Always having a place where people appreciate you, that's -- yeah. That's good. Having a home. Being free to be different," he adds quietly, like the words are difficult, "but still having a home."

It hurts because Veli knows he gets this part especially because he wishes he could have it, himself.

"It iz," Veli says, gentle and so sorry. "Und iz why, when dis is all over, ve cannot keep seeing you."

Gabriela goes entirely still, her massive flank not even rising with her breath anymore -- the lapping water slows down, ripples smoothing down. Sorin is staring with the skin around his eyes tight with unsurprised hurt, standing in the water up to mid-chest and just -- it's. Veli makes himself keep looking at his face, prevents himself from turning away.

"... Because I'm already getting possessive."

Veli and Militsa shake their heads; Veli nods toward Gabriela's shoulder, the sleek brown of her fur still pockmarked with slow-healing burn scars.

"Because we -- protected you?" Sorin asks, hesitant, and Gabriela flinches.

It's Militsa who answers, stark and straight to the point, "Because it makes us vant to let hyu."

"Oh."

"Dot could be just -- just flirty tings, too -- lovers being strong iz _sexy_ \-- but iz too close to how ve respond to a spark. Iz too _confused_. Und ve cannot follow other sparks. Not... Not personally."

"Even though I'm not even that impressive a spark, huh," Sorin says, quietly, almost gently.

"Not _yet_ ," Militsa retorts. "Iz de trouble, keep beink all hinty und den make hyuself _schtop_ , Hy dun even get how hyu do dat, but de day hyu decide to _let_ _go_ \--"

"Ve tink hyu could be," Veli says, and rakes his fingers through the hair at his temple, sighing. Sorin still looks politely dubious, but sad too, like he knows it doesn't _matter_ if he believes they're wrong, only if they do. "Doesn't matter, anyway. Hy could like hyu as both."

There's a long moment of quiet after that, Sorin gazing sightlessly at the cloudy water. Veli watches him, regretful and a little appreciative despite it all.

It could have been nice.

He's not even sure it would have _lasted_ \-- he's almost two centuries old, he's been infatuated rather a lot before, he _knows_ that the bubbly, enchanted feeling doesn't always survive long -- but for the time it lasted it would have been _so_ nice.

Gabriela is silent. Militsa sighs and paws at the water she's sitting in, head bowed. Veli drops a hand to her head, pets her without a word.

"Alright," Sorin says. "I kind of expected something like this."

He turns -- moves -- to face them.

He's up to his waist in the water and the troubled white of it doesn't quite hide the line of his hips. Veli doesn't linger, but when he looks up Sorin is looking back, ruefully amused, and crooks him a little smile.

"Alright," he repeats, but quieter, lower. "After this is over -- then it's over."

"Mm."

"... In the meantime if you want to come down here with me, that'd be fine, too."

Militsa straightens up so suddenly she almost topples backwards; Gabriela snorts, not unkindly, turns her massive head toward the two of them. Veli is still blinking.

"Oh. Uh. Really?"

 _There_ goes the blush -- but he keeps meeting Veli's eyes, smiling a little wider now, like he's going to laugh. Eyes crinkled, kind. "Yes? I mean. I could also come up if you'd rather."

"Oh, no. Dat's fine. Hy mean."

Veli gives up and starts laughing at himself.

"De vater looks nice. Gimme a minute."

He takes off his hat first. (It's going to get wet. Also he maybe wants to put that aside for now.) Then he moves his hands up to his collar to undo the buttons and laughs again, because it's written all over Sorin's face that he's thinking 'oh crap, that actually worked!' All... taken aback and flustered, incredulous.

Veli shrugs out of the shirt in about three seconds. Militsa is trotting up to Gabriela's hovering face, tail wagging and ears up; they sniff at each other and then their muzzles touch, and Veli is standing up with his hands on his belt and no thought anymore for a long, drawn-out tease.

His pants fall off his hips and into the water and Sorin slaps a hand to his forehead, laughing at him, teeth and dimples out. Veli kicks the pants up showily, and then back onto the rock in a sodden lump, without even watching. (It's good to have so many years of experience at weird and funny tricks.)

Sorin looks at his legs, blinking a little -- curious but not put off, Veli thinks -- he's good at judging that. Veli walks deeper into the water, smiling and sad, amused by the kid's attitude and -- endeared, a bit, and.

Like a backdrop for Sorin's nude body there is Gabriela's otter-brown shoulder, the seared pelt, slowly-shrinking scars still peppering her hide in a four feet radius.

He hopes his squad understands when he asks to trade missions with one of his brothers up in Siberia. Maybe Sergeant Drazhan will be willing to ask for a favor so everyone can get sent off with him. There is no way he wants to be stationed around Vulkanburg for the next two years at the very least -- and considering the Baron will be taking the town before the month is out Veli's squad might even end up _in_ town, which... no.

"Velimir," Sorin says quietly, and Veli flinches, knows he's going to hear 'if you're not sure', going to hear 'we don't have to, it's fine' and it's _not_ fine, he doesn't know why it's so hugely not but it's... just. Not.

He craves this for reasons he doesn't get. Which means he should stop right here, but. He's not going to.

"Veli," he corrects. "Iffen ve iz about to fall in bed hyu should call me Veli."

He'll regret it either way.

"Alright, then. Veli," Sorin says, weighted, deliberate. Veli opens his eyes, straightens his back. "If you change your mind at any time, I want to know it," he says -- and he doesn't sound hesitant, he doesn't sound apologetic, it's a fact, is all. "In the meantime, come down here?"

Oh.

Veli walks down the slope, hooves feeling for the next step in the rocks with shaky care. Hot water laps up at his thighs, his hips, his half-mast, confused prick. Sorin is waiting with his hands held out and the smile he crooks him is rueful, is nice. Veli catches himself actually shivering when roughened hands land on his elbows to help him down.

"No?" Sorin says carefully.

Veli smiles back, more with his eyes than his mouth. "Yes."

At a tug Veli leans forward to kiss him, slow and deliberate. A hand slips up his arm, curves around the back of his neck, large and solid, and he shivers, follows the pull deeper into the water, follows Sorin's mouth.

"Ve iz going to regret dis later," he sighs in between kisses.

"I'll pencil it in between regretting setting fire to the neighborhood and regretting being an invert in the first place," Sorin retorts, and nips his jaw.

Veli sinks against him, making a little noise of approval for how easily Sorin takes his weight, and then chuckles into his mouth when they overbalance in slow motion and end up floating, shoulder-deep and mouths still together. Legs glide together, between each other; they bob at the surface, huddled together in the hot water.

It's so nice, kissing him. Slow, languid enough to melt his bones. He is a purring, sighing puddle of jaeger and could come or fall asleep, it's a toss-up.

Sorin's hands glide down his back, settle at his hips -- the grip makes him sigh in appreciation; he nuzzles down into Sorin's neck, mouthing at soft skin, nibbling with the very tip of his fangs. He's always cautious to start with, not because they're so sharp he could hurt anyone by accident, but humans tend to approach his mouthful of bear trap with trepidation. Sorin shivers all over.

Sorin's hands are plastered over the small of Veli's back, fingertips cautiously pressing into where Veli's ass starts to curve out. He doesn't go any farther down.

"Hmm?"

"... What do men even _do_ together?"

Veli snorts loudly against the damp skin of his neck, tries not to laugh too hard; he can hear Militsa cackling off to the side and when Sorin leans back a little to glare at him he's not surprised to see Gabriela flick her claws to toss his fox into the water. Militsa resurfaces like a cork, paddles back to Gabriela's nose, tongue lolling in amusement.

"Anything dot sounds good," he says, grinning, against Sorin's neck, and groans when the nape of his neck is caught again, squeezed, like a warning not to tease him too much. "Does not haff to be buggering either," he adds more seriously, "vater iz not great for it, ve vould haff to get out."

Sorin's arms briefly tighten around him. "... No, it's nice in here."

Yeah, Veli doesn't especially want to let go either. "Vell den. Hands und mouths is nice, or inner thighs --"

Mouthing at his neck, Sorin slips his hand between them. His intent is obvious; he still pauses just before he gets there, leans back to ask. Veli pushes up into his hand, and they bob into the water. Some of it splashes him in the face, but his eyes were already closed from the callused palm gliding down his prick. When he pushes close enough he can feel Sorin's tip against his belly, over the barrier of his hand.

Fingers close around him and he groans his approval, his hands roaming all over those wide shoulders, that strong back; he adds a hint of claws and Sorin tightens his grip and gasps against Veli's wet skin.

He really likes how Sorin is touching him -- his prick, his whole body -- with this hunger, this fascination that seem to hit him straight in the guts, and grab a fistful and _tug_. If the Viscountess swept into the cave right now he would throw a rock at her head and keep on kissing Sorin's neck, on fucking Sorin's hand.

"Lemme touch hyu too?" he offers after long minutes gasping and rocking together, legs tangled underwater. "Iz not fair if--"

"Shh," Sorin says, and drops a kiss on his mouth. He's smiling. "I'm being bossy."

He pulls his hips back and changes his grip and his prick slides up alongside Veli's in the loosened circle of his fingers.

"Gonna take care of you," he whispers very, very quietly. "Just this once."

Then never again.

Veli knows without looking that Militsa is a limp rag of drenched fur across Gabriela's chest, that there's a nose half her entire size traveling patiently up and down her side, breathing her in.

He sighs, eyes closed, and lets himself go loose on Sorin, lets him take his weight -- and it's so amusing in a way for a jaegermonster to just, to -- 'here, you're stronger,' Sorin's _not_ \-- but he's strong enough for this, for now, and Veli doesn't even know what he's thinking anymore, too confused with too many wants.

It doesn't feel like just playing along, like indulging him.

It should but it doesn't.

When Sorin pushes them toward the bank he lets himself float along until he touches stone. He sits up when prompted (hands close on his hips to help him hop up the rock,) reclines half out of the water with his legs on both side of Sorin. There are pointy pebbles in his back which he refuses to acknowledge.

"Mouth, you said...?"

Oh. Yes.

"Tell me how?"

Burning eyes and unsure mouth, pinched at the corners; he forces a smile when Veli meets his eyes, softens it into a realer, sadder one.

"Kiss me first?" Veli asks, leaning down; Sorin grins up at him, dimples.

"You flirt." He braces on Veli's knees, balances his weight there, and kisses him.

When he sinks back down and their lips part he kisses the middle of Veli's chest instead, the bottom of his ribcage, his abdominals.

"So... Mouth. Is it as simple as it sounds, or can I... " he laughs, a little incredulous, like the joke is outré, "can I _experiment_?"

Veli laughs, sinking both hands in damp black curls to kiss the top of his head. "Oh, jah, ve haff to check all de variables und everything for optimal results--"

(He bites his tongue on a teasing/not-teasing-so-much-as-affectionate _Master_. What the _fuck_ is wrong with him.)

"--Knock hyuself out," he finishes, strangled. Sorin, eyes dark, pupils huge with desire or a hint of the Spark, leans down to kiss the head of his prick.

He's not skilled -- of course not, it's his first time -- and he pauses at odd times to consider Veli's responses; his gasps, the way his split hooves clench. Veli expected him to be shy and he's not, though, burning with the determination to make it count. Veli can read it in the fighting set of his jaw, the intensity of his stares, how his hands will clench on Veli's hips.

Veli can feel it in the hot press of his mouth, gagging and coming back down to find an angle that will let him swallow Veli's shaft as far down as possible.

It doesn't take him long to figure out that sucking hard on the way up makes Veli see stars.

He comes with both hands in Sorin's hair, fighting not to fist and tug, not to push him down. Sorin stays down anyway, the head of Veli's prick at the back of his throat, until Veli is done shaking.

"... Come up here," Veli invites afterwards, holding out his hands. Sorin climbs up on top of him, dripping water and hard, kisses him open mouthed as Veli takes him in hand.

When he comes in turn Gabriela starts in on a purr so low it makes Veli's bones vibrate.

"Mm. Nize."

"Yeah." A long, tired pause. "Again?"

Veli chuckles, throat tight. "Greedy. Hy guess ve gotta wait for miz Gabi to be better enyway..."

She's sprawled on her side, half submerged, Militsa draped over the side of her neck like a lick of fire on otter-brown. They flick their ears to acknowledge and then stay exactly as they were. Well. Looks like he and Sorin want to move exactly as much as each other.

The wound is now a series of pockmarks, the biggest just a little over a foot in length, mostly shallow. "We could probably go," Sorin says with a reluctant sigh. "It won't take her much longer now..."

When they go this will be over, but so will their lives if they get caught. Veli echoes his sigh, kisses his brow.

Kisses his mouth, slow and thorough; Sorin makes a strangled noise that seems more denial than pleasure.

"Better get moving now," Veli says, regretful. Sorin sighs, but pushes himself up on his hands.

He spends a few seconds looking down at Veli -- not touching, just his eyes on Veli's face, his throat, his eyes -- and then he quirks a smile down at him and climbs cautiously up to his feet.

Veli stays sprawled on the rock, eyes closed, until Militsa swims up to his knees and asks to be pulled into his lap for pettings.


	5. Chapter 5

"Okay so basically I was thinking, we just need to find a place that's more earth for Gabi to dig through -- or rocks that aren't all in one piece like here," Sorin had said, tapping his re-booted foot on the massive slab of rock the cave was built on for emphasis. "Then we can come out wherever we want on the other side of the mountain, and I'll have a transport ready in about thirty -- no, _fifteen_ minutes -- I've got _ideas_ , I can make one with wood that _even Gabi_ can ride and then it'll go really fast! Way faster than her _spiders_ , for sure."

"Yes, and some areas on the other side don't have _any_ forest at all that we recall, or we can _burn them down_ if they're in the way! Oh my god, this is going to be _fun_ \-- but we _really_ need to figure out a way to make a bigger flamethrower."

Veli and Militsa had laughed, half-dry and already buttoned up, teased Gabriela about her little targeting problem, and then sneaked out, still dripping, for recon.

There are lots of gorges and ravines, this high in the mountain, places where Gabriela might pass unseen, but he's got to make sure she can pass all the way through; it's a lot of terrain...

When he rushes back, still dripping -- it's blood this time around -- it seems to take a century.

He's running a costs-benefits analysis in the back of his mind -- the terrain, how fast those new types of spider climb versus how fast Gabriela can move, the way Sorin's eyes crinkle when he smiles, Veli's duty.

He's got to get back to Castle Wulfenbach. He has all the intel he needs. He doesn't _need_ Sorin.

"Gonna cut it close," Militsa says as she clings to his shoulders.

"Mm."

"Hy tink ve ken do it," she says -- voice fierce, but ears flattened back.

Veli doesn't answer. She's the more impulsive, instinctive part of him, the part that _wants_ , the part that reached out first toward the Brau.

He's the colder part.

They're not going to die here.

They reach the cave and trees are missing, he sees in a flash -- holes in the ground, pulled out roots and all -- probably not the enemy, probably Gabriela. He screeches to a stop; Militsa hops off his shoulder, starts toward --

Sorin and his daemon are building something out of broken branches, trees peeled of their bark in long strips to be braided into --

Sorin and his daemon are building something, heads bowed together, so intent that neither one notices they're not alone anymore.

He knows Militsa called out on instinct, and he know they didn't hear it. He didn't hear it either. The low, two-tone hum fills the whole cave, fills his ears and his skull and his whole body so that there is no space for anything else.

He still cannot smell them. He cannot but he knows. Oh. _Shit_. Oh.

"--Veli?"

He straightens like the sudden silence is a slap, like the voice -- the look, dreamy and distracted, starting to frown at the blood on his sleeves -- he can't, this is not --

"Veli, where are you--"

"Iz not mine," he says, and laughs. Sorin is losing the madness place again, he can see it all over that worried, _tender_ \-- they'd been kissing an hour ago, first and last time, because Veli can't _belong_ to --

"Iz not his," Militsa says, and her voice breaks. " _Master_."

He can see the exact moment where it hits, a few seconds late.

"--What?"

There's no time for that. Veli scans the cave for anything they might need, sees nothing -- the lava gun, but it's already strapped to Gabriela's flank with some kind of vegetal rope, engine and all. "Dey is almost cutting us off. Hyu must come _now_."

"We're almost done with the prototype--"

Veli lands by Sorin -- by _a Heterodyne_ \-- and grabs both his elbows -- manhandling him, who does Veli think he is -- he's got to save them and there's _no time_.

Militsa is trying to haul Gabriela by the fur on her pillar-like paw, frantic and snarling. "No time, ve go _now_ \--!"

He throws Sorin onto his back, sets his hands -- the man catches a grip on instinct, and they're off.

Oh god he slept with him, he slept with the -- gotta save them, _have_ to save them, cannot let them die here, who cares about a _fuck_ , about how _charming_ \--

A Heterodyne.

Veli's nose is still fucking _broken_.

He takes to the trees, points -- "Here, dere, dere, circling us, dey know vhere ve iz -- do hyu see--"

"Yeah," Sorin says, all that incandescent enthusiasm drained out of his voice. "Yeah."

"Hyu gotta go dat vay," Veli points, downslope, right at where a group is shaking the trees coming at them. "Race down vith Mistress Gabriela, fast as hyu ken. Dun worry about dem."

He jumps to a lower branch and Sorin slips off his back, onto Gabriela's -- looks up at him and Veli can't deal with the look in his eyes, so he swings toward the ground by a hand to catch Militsa, and they're off to clear the way.

The pilot's cabins are more closed now, tiny slits to see out of, no way for Militsa to get in. Veli charges at top speed through bright orange jets, a rock in hand, smashes it through the gap. Skins his knuckles to the bone, forces his arm in -- biceps won't fit -- hooks claws in flesh he can't see. Tears his arm out.

A short scream. No death sparks. He kicks off the front of the clank, Militsa slipping in the back of his jacket, finds another rock. The air is hot and dry; his hat is smoking. He goes for the leg joints next, breaks one -- not enough -- then a second clank catches up -- he mule-kicks a dead tree trunk out from under its feet and it wobbles, he rebounds higher on the slope to shove a boulder -- shoulder pops out; he pops it back in -- boulder's too light, cracks the cabin, doesn't break it open, but they're yelling, slowing down.

Militsa a ball of furious fur against his spine, he snatches a branch off the ground and throws himself at the second clank.

The air is full of jets of fire and thick white smoke. He kills a driver, two; he can feel Gabriela coming through the thumping of the ground under his hooves, she's close, she's about to pass through and the rest of the army is converging on them, there's a second group following on the heels of this one and if they mess up the timing --

He narrowly avoids another burst of lava and then Gabriela is here, crashing down the slope like a boulder, Sorin standing astride her neck with his hands fisted in dark fur.

Veli expects him to use the lava cannon -- or the cold cannon -- but instead he just aims Gabriela at the last clank. Her shoulder hits so hard it spins halfway around and then flips on its back. Veli flashes his teeth, jumps after them. They can already hear the second group -- see it, and Veli remembers the land there, they're gonna wait for Sorin to leave cover and then strafe them at will.

"Left!" he yells as they break out of the line of trees. "Iz a hole by de big rock--"

Something swipes him out of the air from behind; the world whirls around him.

He lands with a thud almost all the way over, rolls on top of Militsa, comes to a stop on his other flank. Jumps back onto his feet.

His right leg won't hold his weight. Huh.

In front of him there's a line of lava clanks, guns up to rake the whole clearing.

Behind and to the left there's Sorin and Gabriela, trying to brake in the middle of a turn. Behind _them_ there's another clank with a dead pilot, but it looks like the gunner decided to try their hand at driving.

"Behind!" he screams, teeth bared.

He can't, no matter where -- too many enemies --

Gabriela whirls low, one paw out like a gigantic fly swatter. Her claws cut halfway through the cabin before she flings it off.

Someone shoots at Veli. He dodges. Femur's broken, maybe the hip joint. Some ribs.

Well. They're going to die here after all.

That's fine. Need to thin the herd first. He throws himself forward.

Branch -- Militsa jumps out, dodges right as he dodges left -- jumps back, stick in maw, across the new lava stripe (fur smokes dark gray) they're on the middle clank and Veli stabs and stabs through the gap until sparks come up; the pilot's last spasms crash the clank and he rolls on the ground -- where's his branch, where's his _weapon_ (where's his master, oh god please get away.)

" _Veli!_ "

No, you daft boy, run.

He stands up. There's more clanks. Can't stop the few peeling off to go after Sorin.

Can stop the rest from ever catching up. It's all he can do now.

Only Gabriela is still coming.

" _No -- Mistress, no!_ "

Militsa is snarling, puffed up and all teeth out, tail like a bottlebrush; for a second they think it's maybe why they screech to a stop in the middle of the clearing. (Well in range of the lava.)

Then Sorin hauls his cannon up.

It feels like nothing when it rushes up through him but the nearest still-moving clank freezes in mid-motion. There are too many clanks coming (six? eight?) and they're starting to surround the clearing and they _will_ have other weapons -- Gabriela is even harder to miss than the wide side of a barn -- Veli cuts the air with his hand in negation. " _Go!_ "

" _You_ come!" Gabriela booms back, raw fury, steely _command_ \--

He turns his back to all those clanks still ready to fire and leaps, one-legged. He wobbles; goes on hands and one foot; he is not as good as some on all fours, legs too long, he's slower -- less of a target, _Sorin and Gabriela are making themselves a target_ \--

"Hy iz coming, now _go!_ "

A jet of lava turns to stone in mid-air, keeps going -- Gabriela slaps it out of the air and it breaks, showers the area with fist-sized rocks. With a last pass of the cold gun Gabriela turns around, starts her oddly slow-looking, ponderous gallop back up the slope. Why is she so slow, she wasn't so slow before, a man at a run could catch up and Veli is gaining and _so are the clanks on his heels_ \--

They're at the edge of the trees when Sorin dismounts, sliding off her flank, and presses his side to a tree. His eyes are on Veli, dark and furious. Veli, mouth open, can't decide whether to call him Master or Sorin.

" _Keep going_."

It rasps out with enough spark that Veli and Militsa do without thought, hobbling past him and his little walking clank, the stolen lava engine that powers the gun. Gabriela is crushing enough of a path to make following her easy as walking down a boulevard, but they turn their heads anyway, slow down despite orders -- it _was_ an order -- and six or seven spider clanks are bearing down on the kid, Veli's awkward lover, his surprise Heterodyne.

Sorin steps back to the full length of the cannon's tether, and shoots at his own engine straight on.

The explosion rattles the whole clearing. Fire blinds Veli; he lands hard on his knees, blinking black spots out of his vision. For a little eternity he can't see Sorin -- the trees are blown aside, bushes torn out, he doesn't recognize the treeline, there's no human silhouette in it --

"Here!" Militsa yelps, and races back to the young man groaning in the bushes, only a few meters to the right of them. Veli walks on his broken leg in his hurry, and really shouldn't, and really doesn't care.

"Sorin!"

Sorin rolls out of the bushes, shakes his head -- Veli can barely see his face, still blinded by the sudden flash of light. (He's pretty sure the forest is burning. It's mostly pine trees at this altitude, and tree sap catches nicely.)

"Give me -- give me your arm."

Veli does, hurrying to help him up. Sorin grabs Veli's arm and pulls it across his own shoulders to take Veli's weight instead.

"But--"

"I'm glare-blind, you're lame, so goddamned _what_ \-- come on."

Militsa on rear guard, they half-shuffle, half-run off. (Sorin catches branches with his face but never misses dodging an inconvenient rock.)

"Pursuit?" Veli asks, muffled by the strain.

"None so far. Dere iz a big hole."

They catch up to Gabriela and then Veli is the one leading them -- so close to the place he wanted, the gap between two massive rocks that descends into the earth, that seems too narrow for Gabriela's bulk -- but when she pushes, her shoulders pop through and then they're descending a sharp slope -- there's a shallow cave at the bottom, and even better, some actual boulder-free earth which is well-defended enough to get Gabriela enough time to start digging. Hopefully.

Veli has no idea how far down the earth goes or how useful Gabriela is going to find it, but it's the best he could do with the time he had. (They step over a couple of corpses that he stashed there earlier, blood not even quite dry. Sorin doesn't seem to notice.)

"This looks good," Gabriela says eventually as they reach the bottom of the ravine, tapping the earth with the palm of her front paw. Sorin holds the both of them back from her; she plunges her claws straight into the earth and moves a half-ton of it off to the side, presses it to make a tunnel wall.

Veli tries to turn so he can keep watch on their back. Sorin doesn't budge.

"Sit."

... Veli sits.

There's a rock to his left; he perches there, cautious, a hand cupping his upper thigh to keep the bone steady -- not sure it'll help, but it can't hurt.

He doesn't want to look up at Sorin. A few feet away Militsa is turned half-away, ears low, tail dragging in the dust.

"... What... did you call me. Earlier."

There's a thread of tension running taut behind the bland words, ready to snap. Veli bows his head.

"Master," he whispers.

The next handful of seconds is very long.

"Why. Why did you call me that."

"Hy think hyu know." He dares a glance up. Sorin has blood caked in dust down the side of his face and he's still squinting like he can barely guess where Veli is, and it's not _that_ dark down here. His hands are fisted.

"How do _you_ know?"

Veli winces. How did he _not_ know? He knows why Militsa didn't, the Brau is something his masters did to his body and she's of his soul, not his flesh; she can learn people's specific scents but she'll never recognize the bloodline alone -- but _him_. Even underneath the stink and the sweat and -- are his sinuses _cauterized_? How did he not realize earlier, before the peppers, in prison, how--

"Hyu know de noise hyu make vhen iz tinking of fun tings?" Militsa says. "Iz... Distinctive."

Veli can see the look on Sorin's face, expectant anger turning to frustrated bewilderment. "It could be a _coincidence_."

He's holding back his voice, not one word higher than the next, and it's so wrong, so ...

(How does this guy have a _badger_ , Veli remembers him and Militsa wondering.)

"She means it iz unique," Veli says, to cut off the denial at the knee, and runs a hand through his hair, under his battered hat. "People haff tried und failed to copy it by voice und by machine both. Iz a bloodline ting."

He makes himself look up to meet Sorin's eyes. "Iz called heterodyning. Hy dun know how far back in de past dot ancestor iz, but... Hyu iz. Ov de blood. Hyu iz dat."

He realizes he's looking at Sorin like he's desperate, like he's -- there are too many things raw on his face for the kid to see, and for all that Sorin tried to shoulder his own spark earlier -- for all that he wanted to play at being bossy, at being in gentle charge, it's. It's different when it's true.

Veli works to wipe it off his face, shrugs. (Militsa is still hunched in the dust, small-looking, miserable.)

"So I'm." Sorin chokes. "You really _are_ mine. You -- the town. Your home."

"Jah," Veli says very quietly, hands clenched on the rock so he won't reach out.

"But I'm probably from like, some random bastard branch two centuries ago, it can't _count_ \--"

"Ve iz not _Fifty Families_. Hyu haz de blood. _Nothing else_ counts." A pause. "Und iz not like ve haff anyone else."

Sorin starts to pace. Veli wants to catch his hand, to pull him closer, make him breathe. Hold him, maybe.

"Hy iz sorry, Master."

Sorin whirls around, curls flying, blood drawing dramatic lines down his face. "Don't _call_ me that! Don't -- we were _friendly_ , we were--"

Lovers.

Just once, and then never again.

He ignores the bitten-off sentence, can't engage with what they both know finishes it right now. "Hy ken be hyu friend _und_ hyu minion. Hy iz still hyu minion first." He sees Sorin's face fall; he ignores that, too. "Ve should talk about it vhen we haff escaped. Hy ken hear dem at de opening of de ravine. Dey ken't follow but ve really need to block it in case dey go und try to fill it vith lava--"

The walls rattle around them with a low boom; rocks and earth fall. Veli throws himself at Sorin, on top of him; a rock big as a rabbit bounces off his head, clods of earth half-bury his legs. A boulder tumbles down into the ravine a few feet away from them, hits and cracks with a noise like a gunshot. Veli drags them both toward the waiting overhang, tons of stone straight over their heads, and the potential safety of Gabriela's massive body. She has her back braced against the ceiling of the tunnel she's been digging, and Sorin helps him limp right next to her side.

The earth walls are turning to odd clumps, falling and piling up between her legs like oversized grains of sand.

" _Petrescu!_ " a woman's voice shouts from outside, reverberated by the canyon and some voice amplifier both.

Sorin is leaning on Gabriela's flank, Veli standing on one hoof with his hand on Sorin's shoulder to keep from falling into his daemon, and the floor shifts under them -- no much, but enough. It's doing the same odd clumping thing the walls are doing and he can see panic rising on Sorin's face as dust briefly showers them.

" _Did you think I would not have come up with ways to counter your daemon? I've had years, child. Come out now._ "

"It's going to crumble," Sorin mutters, eyes roaming over the small pocket of space they still have, shielded by a rock and Gabriela's bulk. "It's all going to -- like digging in _gravel_ \--"

... They have no more lava engine. Sorin still has Rozalia's satchel, but it's all small tools, for precision work, and no materials to work _on_.

" _We'll chalk it up to breakthrough irrationality and you can finally earn your keep._ "

... Fuck.

He hates suggesting it, but he has no other idea -- and maybe, maybe Sorin will get angry enough to come up with something else, the Heterodynes have _always_ come up with something else.

"Hyu could surrender for now, und later--"

"And she'll have me slaving away under three times as many guards and knives at my parents' throats," Sorin rasps, hands clenched hard on Veli's elbows. "And _you_ she will bury or burn alive _right here_ , and if you _think_ for one _second_ in your _ridiculous head_ that I'll allow that...!"

Man, if Veli has to kill himself to remove himself as a lever to use against Sorin -- but then Sorin freezes, mouth open. Militsa's head jerks up. Veli is staring, ears flicking forward to catch the barest hints of hum shivering in the air.

"She is not _that_ nice," Sorin says in a tone of dawning revelation, voice still buzzing with otherworldly undertones.

"--Vot?"

"She's not _diplomatic_ ," Sorin tells him, and suddenly his eyes burn, his teeth are bared. "She's a tyrant! She wouldn't bother to _ask_ me if she could have brought one of my parents along, she'd give an _ultimatum_! She'd tell me they're right here and when I don't come out she'd make sure I _hear_ them. Oh god, Rozalia, _thank_ you."

Veli can't help grinning back, even though they're still stuck in a hole underground and at the mercy of a challenged madgirl and her lava habit. "Vell. Ve iz still stuck in a hole vithout materials to build from, but iz nice hyu parents aren't here?"

"Very nice," Sorin agrees with fervor, without a touch of irony.

" _Petrescu, you have five seconds--_ "

Gabriela, braced against the crumbling ceiling, shuffles her paws to turn her face toward the opening. "What's surrendering going to get us?" she calls out almost leisurely with her forge-bellow lungs, as Sorin lets Veli balance on one leg and starts pacing fast through the rubble, eyes roaming, feverish. "Because the status quo is not going to cut it anymore, Milady!"

There's a moment of silence where Veli is pretty sure that the viscountess is sitting hard on her urge to tell Sorin to watch his mouth, or just to order her minions to fill the hole with burning tar or something mean like that. Why does she want Sorin to work for her so much? Veli tests his leg in silence, a hand cupping his thigh, but from what he can feel the break goes all the way through and hasn't managed to fix itself in the last five minutes. His hip joint is not any less sore, either.

"Some of the streets in North Rim may be widened for your use," a male voice that is likely Raduva's daemon calls back.

Sorin and Gabriela go dangerously still. Militsa sinks on her haunches so she can leap the instant they indicate which way, on pure reflex; Veli shifts his weight onto his good leg.

" _Oh_ , the _North Rim_ ," they say together, pleasantly furious. " _Yes_ , it's the _poor undesirables_ who need to have _their_ houses _remodeled smaller_ \--"

They look like they're going to turn around and stomp back out with nothing but fists and claws.

Veli would give good money to watch Gabriela go against any daemon or human in the world. He reaches out and snatches Sorin's sleeve.

"Hyu vos trying to stall her und plan. Vot _iz_ de plan?"

Sorin stares at him, mouth pinched white, chin up like a declaration of war and hellfire in his eyes, and _oh_. Oh, hello Master Saturnus. _There_ is the family's blood. Veli fights back an urge to cringe back, to bow. (To cry.)

" _\--Shit_ , you're hurt," Sorin snaps. "Bloody _Christ_ , I can't--"

"Hy vill follow hyu no matter vhere," Veli interrupts. "If hyu vant to go up und fight her, iz what we'll do. Mine leg vill not stop me."

"It'll still hinder you!"

"Hy haff fought und won vith _worse_ , Master, don't plan around me--"

He's not sure what he said for a second for Sorin to stiffen like this, but.

"... I owe you," Sorin says, halted, like the words don't want to come together right. "In return. In return for _you_. I _would_ destroy whoever had hurt you."

It takes Militsa whining quietly to remind Veli that he's quoting. That it's something Veli himself said about what their Heterodynes do for their town, for their people.

"... It's smarter not to let you get hurt worse in the first place," he finishes.

Gabriela shudders, a ripple going through her massive flank, and then she nods.

" _Come up to discuss it further_ ," the viscountess calls down. " _Now. Or die_."

"Yeah, I'm coming," Sorin yells back, his eyes on Veli, and not going anywhere.

"Velimir," Gabriela says, gentle, as she turns more fully to face them. "Militsa. Sorry for asking you. We will not ask the two of you to return it."

She sweeps her shovel-paw back, and then around them -- stopping just short of actual contact. There is a wall of daemon flesh, dark leathery pads inches from Veli's back -- someone else's daemon, almost touching him.

About to touch him.

Sorin is standing before her chest, under her wedge-head, and he waits.

Veli has touched another person's daemon twice in his life. Twice, it was to kill them. It shredded him inside with shocked fear, with the echoes of their death and the echoes of their deepest, most intimate self, revulsed and _wrong_.

He leans his weight back into her.

Gabriela sighs, a breath that seems to last centuries, and gathers them all in her huge paw, presses them to her chest, and it is -- it is.

He's vaguely aware of his body -- gone limp, Militsa pressed with all her length against his flank, hard leather to his back and his face half buried in sleek, dense fur. His leg throbs. It's a century away.

Sorin is. Awkwardness and alienation, a hunger to belong warring with an independence so fierce -- shameful, why do you want to leave, to abandon us -- so many complexes. (Don't stand out so much, is this you being stubborn for no reason again, we know it's your _nature_ (to be a freak in soul _and_ in desires) but _control yourself!_ ) (You're never going to manage to pretend to be normal hard enough to make anyone forget that your soul is a monstrous badger-ferret-mole.)

It hurts, but mostly because of Sorin's shame at being seen.

And rising all through it there's the thunderstorm of the Spark, the coming cataclysm (it might rip out everything Sorin has been, make him into a stranger, make him into a danger to his family, god, he's so afraid.)

He's afraid of losing himself and hurting people and he's afraid of failing Veli and his family (they're waiting) and he's afraid, afraid, afraid --

Less afraid than he is angry.

There is a core of frustration and steel down there, good common sense and restrain, restrain, _restrain_ , and _no one holds the leash but him_.

She wanted to put a lid on _that_ , Veli thinks, and laughs, more mind than body. His hands are clenched in fur that feels nothing like Militsa's silk and fluff and he laughs, using up what little air they have with them, and doesn't even think to fear the dark that closes up on them, the tons and tons of earth and rock balanced over them. Gabriela is the keystone of a moving arch -- resting on her wrist as she digs with her other paw, slow and steady, slow and steady...

It felt so bright and fresh, the desire Sorin had for him, how much he _wanted_ Veli's clean lack of shame, of furtiveness about his desires -- Veli's trust that Sorin could hold his own.

Veli entrusting himself to him, when Sorin doesn't feel like he can trust himself most days -- _as a lover and as a spark_ \-- he has to be worthy of that. He is _going_ _to be_ worthy of that.

Rocked by her body, by the slow beats of a heart as heavy as he is, the patient grind of claws and moving earth, Velimir Ardel lets himself doze.

(Loose and wrung out of all his strength and willpower, and safe, so safe, like Master Carmine's hand on his hair the day he survived the Brau.)

\--

They break into three or four enclosed caves and Veli barely wakes up -- one of them, Veli wakes up more because Sorin is wriggling between paw and fur to push Veli's filtering mask onto his face and hold Militsa's out until Veli makes her put her pointy face into it, but apart from a weird aftertaste at the back of his throat nothing more happens to any of them.

Being alone wakes him. Alone, and empty. Oddly flat.

He gathers Militsa to his chest and opens his eyes onto a dark gray sky, vaguely brighter, more golden on one side, and isn't sure if what's coming is full night or daybreak. Off to the side there's Gabi's solid hindquarters, fussing with something he can't see, and it's odd to see her with his eyes and not _know_ her in intimate detail.

Sometimes she hums, a couple of notes here and there, and falls silent again.

Militsa is the one who sits up first. "Vhere's Sorin?"

She's on top of his stomach. Veli makes his muscles jump to unbalance her. " _Master_ Sorin," he mutters to her. Neither of them wants to, but.

Maybe in private, but it's coming so instinctively, it's going to cause trouble when they get back to the army.

"...Oh," Sorin says from the side.

Veli's stomach sinks. Even though that was correct, even though he knows it has to happen, even though...

He sits up; Sorin is sitting nearby with the satchel open at his side, fiddling with branches -- trying to light a fire by striking metal, Veli can see that. He shuffles closer on hands and one knee, not saying anything. There's an overhang over their heads to hide from above, but the view is wide open. Dark as it is, a fire will be seen for miles.

He takes the tinder and shows Sorin how to light it up with nothing but friction and a couple of sticks.

"Think she thinks ve iz dead?"

"No," Sorin answers, hands in his lap, watching Veli's hands. "Buried, yes, but she has no real idea how fast we can go underground. It's not like we were giving it our best for her before. I suspect she'll figure that out, too," he adds distantly.

"Hm."

His face is so blank, so controlled. Veli knows that inside Sorin is a shifting fire of insecurity and rebellion -- that he feels bad, and wants to take the bad feeling and _chuck it,_ because it's not a fair feeling, not deserved (but that he can't help but wonder, what _if_ he deserves it?)

"How are you doing?" Sorin asks eventually.

"Hm? Fine." Veli smiles without looking up past the rim of his hat. "Preddy great, even. Hy had a nize long nap."

Militsa bites him. Veli twitches, refuses to show anything on his face. He's pretty sure she drew blood.

"Um...?"

"Chust a leedle love pinch." He sighs, relents. "How iz _hyu_ , Master?"

He was surrounded in Sorin. Saw, felt him. Sorin was the one who had _an intruder inside his very self_.

He's pretty sure if Sorin hadn't been in a fugue for the majority of the trip he'd have been even more messed up than Veli was, and it wasn't even _bad_ messed up. That he could just soldier on is...

It's a tribute to the kind of mental grasp one develops on oneself after your teenage years have been spent with people taking your smallest show of adolescent frustration or independent thought as a sign that you're about to unleash the kind of unstoppable, uncaring rampage that the daemon supposedly suggests. Or so Veli imagines.

Badgers, the common wisdom goes, indicate a violent, antisocial temper, and weasels a twisted mind, and moles secretiveness, and spark-made animals suggest insanity.

"I'm fine. Is your leg still broken?"

"Oh, no," Veli replies with a wince, and leans over the tiny flame to blow then higher. "Iz fine now. But Hy iz pretty sure de bone vos not set right. Hy ken walk on it, probably."

"... Better or worse than on a good splint?"

Veli blinks, then cautiously -- making sure the little fire is at least vaguely shielded by a mound of earth -- climbs to his feet. He tests his weight on his bad leg and -- yeah, no, the hip joint is fine now but the muscles along his thigh are threatening to tear over a sticking-out edge. And he can't fold his leg entirely. Hell.

"Probably de same," he admits.

"Okay, then we should set it now. Gabriela doesn't need me for the moment, and I don't know when else we'll have the time or how long we'll be running for, so--" He pauses, drags that distant, formal expression back onto his face. "What do you think? You've got more experience."

"No, hyu iz right, Hy vill be incapacitated de same way, but perhaps not as long. Gotta rebreak it now."

Sighing, he undoes his pants, lets them fall down his legs. He's already lowering himself back down when he catches the slight flush on Sorin's face -- the mortified, I'm-a-pervert look behind it.

Or maybe it's the oh-right-we're-not-lovers-anymore one.

"Iz gonna be hard from dis angle," Militsa comments quietly. Her tail drags on the ground.

"... I can do it," Sorin offers before Veli can ask. "If Jaeger bones aren't extra resilient..."

Well. Veli stretches out his leg, cautious to hold onto the knee. "Dey iz, but right now is barely attached together. Hyu haff strong hands..."

God, those hands. He's never going to feel them closing on his hips now.

Sorin nods without meeting his eyes, shuffles closer, sets his hands on Veli's thigh with total professionalism -- no smile, no blush, just somber determination.

Veli is going to get tended to by a Heterodyne, something that has not happened in over ten years and which many of his brothers would give an arm -- often literally -- to happen to them. He is not happy.

"Hokay, hyu set hyu thumbs here, und push in dat direction -- feel it?"

A musing, resonant hum. "Yeah, I can feel the angles. Brace yourself."

Veli lets himself fall onto his back, takes a breath. It's not going to be very strong pain, but he's not exactly a masochist either. ... Not that bad of one, at least. "Ready, boss."

Maybe he can call him boss. Maybe it'll chafe less than Master. Maybe -- _ow_.

He stays silent as Sorin, grimacing but with an intense frown on his face, pulls lightly on his knee and presses down on the edges of his bone to get them to line up better. "There. Don't move, I'm getting wood for a splint."

It's going to be the most efficient splint that's ever been made with wood, Veli can tell. He stays on his back, thinks about Sorin's soul, thinks about going home, thinks about Sorin and home. What if they get to Mechanicsburg and Sorin still doesn't feel he belongs?

Vulkanburg didn't want him. Maybe it'll be enough of a difference.

He gets his leg splinted, Sorin sitting on his knees at his side and not talking, even as Gabriela starts to hum in longer notes in the background. How can she edge onto the Madness Place and Sorin not? They're so _strange_.

"I truly am sorry," Sorin says, more sober than small, than _crumpled_ the way Veli would have expected him to be. "I saw no other way out, but that's no excuse; if I had more experience, or if I had planned better beforehand, I would have found a better way, or we'd never have been in that situation to start with. That's not what -- not what a trustworthy Spark does." _To his minions_ was left implied. "Once we get where we're going, I won't mind if you would rather fade into the rest of the army."

Veli can see it, is the thing. Sorin would very nobly stop seeking Veli out, stop following him with his eyes when he thinks Veli can't see him, would bury himself in duties and work.

The rest of the army would love him, and take good care of him. They would joke with him -- probably flirt, too. He would probably like them. Come to see them as more than just unasked-for duty. He would make friends amongst them.

They would never know how much he wants someone to stand in his path and feel like they can say 'No. I care for you, and that is why: no.' They'd never know the reach and depth of that willpower behind the placid exterior, the bashful blushes, they'd never want him properly.

Veli and Militsa look up at him, and say nothing. Veli takes the hand fisted on Sorin's knee, brings it to his chest; Militsa lays down with her paws in the space between Sorin's leg and Veli's thigh, and lays her head on Sorin's freed knee.

There's still his heavy work pants between them. Still that last barrier. Veli's heart is in his throat, waiting for a reaction, for a rejection. It's ridiculously too early to risk something like this -- and he's nowhere near as _bright_ as Sorin is, there's a hundred smirky flirts just like him in the Jaeger corps alone.

He can't stand the thought of another one of those standing in his place.

Sorin chokes, hand clenching around Veli's, staring down at her pointy red face. Gabriela stops humming, turns to face them -- does not come any closer. If she could see, she'd be staring, too; her ears are up in confused alarm and she makes an odd, strangled chirp that Veli can't decode.

"Are you -- why? If this is just because, just to be fair, it's not. You don't have to, I. Veli -- Mila, you don't _have_ to."

"Touch me," she replies quietly, and leaves it at that.

It doesn't feel horrible, when he does -- fingers shaking against the edge of her ears, head bowed like that hides the tears in his eyes. It doesn't feel like a violation, it doesn't hurt. Being opened, having hands on his heart and liver and whoever know what else and they're here to caress, to heal. It's embarrassing -- knowing Veli is being seen, knowing all of him is here on display, all the not-so-good parts of him and the long history of wars and people he has loved and lost, or just left.

It's embarrassing, but warm, too. Veli's cheeks are hot, and his heart flutters in his throat and when Sorin meets his eyes he grins despite himself from the disbelieving, dizzy _heat_ in them.

The disbelief blooms into laughter and then Sorin is kissing him, his hand so, so light on Militsa's head (his presence so warm, like a million bubbles of fascinated delight, of relief.)

It's -- intense, is the thing, so intense that the kissing grows sloppy, distracted and then Veli has to pull away, still laughing and breathless, shivering, and then Militsa has to slide out from under Sorin's hand. Sorin looks briefly crestfallen and then gives a rueful laugh.

Militsa props her front paws on Sorin's chest and licks at his chin, just once, before she hops off and takes off running for Gabriela. Veli clears his throat and then gives up, laughs some more.

"Mein gott. Dis iz ridiculous. Ve haff known each other for less than a week und already here hyu iz, going und touching mine Mila. Hyu iz a _dangerous_ flirt, Hy see Hy have _lessons_ to take from hyu."

Sorin cracks up, arms around his ribs, loud in the quiet of the mountain at -- huh, it's dawn after all. Gorgeous. "Oh god. Veli. Veli, I lost my virginity and touched my first daemon in _less than twenty-four hours_. I'm -- I'm a _stud_."

"Iz vhat Hy iz saying! -- vait, iz hyu planning to touch any _more_ daemons?"

"Well -- I don't know." Sorin's eyes crinkle, brighten, his cheeks dimple -- even his curls look springier. "Is Mila planning to keep putting out? Her fur is very soft, I _might_ be convinced not to stray..."

Veli wraps an arm around his neck and pulls him close to ruffle the hell out of his hair, and then drags him up so they can get started on that transport before the Viscountess finds them after all.

It's odd, because he's really not afraid of the possibility.

Sorin's transport is finished in the nick of time -- as stone spiders pour down the slope, _up_ the slope, _everywhere_. It's nothing much to look at, a square platform of tree trunks lashed together, and some more trunks striped of their bark in odd spirals and stuck underneath like wheels by some even odder, fire-related process. Gabi jumps on it and shoves with her back paw and it _shoots_ off the rocks and over several very startled stone clank drivers. Veli is holding onto Sorin with one arm and onto the edge of the platform with his other hand, Militsa's teeth clamped on the back of his jacket so she won't fly off.

"Dis is awesome!" he shouts as the slope rushes past. "Ve iz going to wreck so hard!"

"We will _not_ wreck!" Sorin says, offended, and then "Oops, better install the steering apparatus then."

Veli's ears are flying back with the wind and every bump rattles the whole platform under his hooves like it'll come apart next bounce. He grins up at Sorin and Gabriela, who are both leaning into the wind with a look of concentration, and props Sorin up with a hand to the small of his back. God, they're going to be a _fun_ spark when they really let it go. Veli can't wait to show his whole unit.

"So vhere to, boss?"

Sorin blinks at him, like the title is throwing him off.

"Hy call hyu boss becaws hyu iz bossy. Iz like a sneaky, speshul pet name ov _luff_ \--"

"Veli, if you make me laugh hard enough to fall off the transport, I am _dragging you off with me._ "

He's blushing all happy, though. Looks like 'boss' is a go.

"And I don't know where to, I was thinking my parents but I have no idea where they'd go, and if Raduva didn't find them then I doubt I will." He briefly chews on his lip, and then twists the steering branch just in time to dodge a sudden pine tree. "So I guess it's still the Baron first, and probably we can send the jaeger army if they won't come out on their own when they hear..."

He doesn't look entirely satisfied, and Veli agrees, but on the other hand, if he manages to lose the one sparky Heterodyne they have at the moment and not even manage to bring the information that there are _more_ back to the Generals, his ghost is going to have to haunt itself. Better not take too many risks. The army will find them.

"By de vay...!"

"Hmm?"

"Hyu parents! Vun ov dem has got to be Heterodyne too!"

"... Well, seeing as I doubt I was adopted, yeah, probably? Why is that exciting?"'

"Iz _way_ easier to be dating de heir den de lord, duh!" He grins, all teeth out. The curve of his cheek highlighted by sunrise, Sorin stares at him, and then splutters and laughs with him.

They all end up briefly tossed in the air when the transport platform hops off a little cliff, even Gabriela. They land with rib-bruising force; the second Sorin can breathe again he starts babbling about braided fern leaves as elastic straps to tie passengers down with. Veli kisses him breathless and steals the driving branch from him.


	6. Chapter 6

Veli has been coming on and off Castle Wulfenbach for over ten years, from when parts of it were still in construction; it's as familiar as the Jaegerhall back home by now. He knows the rhythms of the corridors and offices, the ebb and flow of crowds, he can navigate by smell -- at least now that he can smell again he can -- it's almost home away from home.

What feels oddest is that now that Sorin and his family are onboard it doesn't feel any different.

His brothers are happier, in general. He keeps getting backslapped into walls, and Militsa's fur sticks up from too much licking, and most of the civilians look slightly on edge, confused by all the toothy grins. But the main corridors still fill up at noon on the dot, and the cafeteria the Lackyas prefer still stinks disturbingly of fish guts.

It's almost as if there's no Heterodyne onboard, after all.

"Sorin, sveethart, iz lunch time, hyu wanna take a break?"

As expected, the jaegers stationed at the lab's door and the openings onto the outside hull titter, and the spark in question doesn't even notice. Veli and Militsa grin pleasantly at their brothers in arms and pretend they're not even a little bit embarrassed.

"Woot! Hallo, meester consort--"

"Athanasi, Hy know hyu iz sad und jealous," Veli says with a wide fangy smile as Militsa tackles his vulture and yanks on her tail feathers. "Und iz why Hy iz going to talk him into inviting hyu to de seraglio de second der Kestle iz fixed. Because Hy _luff_ hyu."

A torrent of whistling and laughter starts up -- "Alreddy planning for de threesomes, huh!" "Hy _knew_ dere vos sumtin between hyu two, too bad de Master swooped in furst!" "Vill look nize in de leedle pants!" -- only quelled when Gabriela lifts her muzzle off her project and looms curiously over them, black nose twitching.

"What's this, then? -- Oh, hello, Mila."

" _Miiiila_ ," one of Veli's brothers repeats under his breath, giggling. Militsa huffs and hops onto a chair so she can bump noses with Gabriela.

"Dey iz being verra silly und jealous. Hi, sveetie."

"Hi," Gabriela replies, eyes blinking mildly -- it's how she smiles. "Veli, how are you today, any nosebleeds we should know about?"

"Jeez, hyu sneeze out de cauterized lining ov hyu sinuses _once_ ," Veli replies good-naturedly. He guesses it _was_ mildly impressive, it came out almost all in one piece, and there were a lot of blood clots and mucusy... _things_ , too.

"Ludy is _still_ talking about it," Gabi says, amused, "we might have to engineer a repeat."

Pff. "Ennyting hyu vant, boss," he says, and means not a word of it. It didn't hurt once it was over -- his nose was just tingly for another hour or so afterwards -- but the lady jaegers are never going to let up on the period jokes if this happens to him a second time. "Anyvays Hy iz fine, und de leg iz good enuff to kick Dario through valls once again, too, hy iz pleased to report."

"An essential mark of good healing," she agrees, voice dancing with laughter.

"Glad hyu agree. Does Sorin vant to eat? Mistresses Tereza und Vera sez hyu poppa iz good enough today to have lunch in de big greenhouse, und dere iz enough space for hyu, ve checked."

"--Oh, yes, what a good idea. Sorin? Sorin, put that down, it's being boring anyway."

Sorin looks up, pushes goggles up his forehead. He's in a leather apron and huge gloves, and his pockets bulge with tons of little gadgets he's been making; Gabriela has brass claw sheaths on, and there's all sorts of things strapped to her flanks. Gears and levers and saddlebags. Veli is sure they're keeping enough on her to build a little hut or a locomotive at a moment's notice, but he would bet his hat there's not a single strip of salted meat or a death ray squirreled away.

"Aw, but -- lunch with Father, you said?"

He blinks at Veli (there's black grime on his face around the goggles, leaving his eye sockets and the bridge of his nose almost white; it makes him look more wide-eyed) and then he smiles, hesitant -- blushes when someone whistles.

"Jah, but Hy did not tink it vould be so easy to get hyu attention," Veli says, grinning back, "so now we haff a whole twenty minutes."

"Hy suggest ve use it making an idiot-throwing apparatus," Militsa suggests, side-eyeing the other jaegers' daemons.

"Ap-pa- _ra_ -tus!" Athanasi crows back, stressing each syllable. "Really must be _rubbing off_ on hyu a _lot!_ "

Whoops, look at that, a flying teapot. How surprising. Mysteries abound in a spark's lair. (The jerk dodged. Very sad.)

"Oh my _god_ , guys, do you have to make double entendre of everything?!"

"Also we haven't had a single moment alone since we came back," Gabriela grumbles under her breath, "who's got time to be rubbing on anything anyway!"

Lidina cackles. "Vell, no vun iz schtopping hyu!"

Veli has never been so glad for Anton's humorless grumping. "Hy iz schtopping _hyu_ ," the old guy says, grabbing Athanasi by the shoulders and turning him around for the door. "Effryone out!"

"I didn't mean _now_ ," Sorin says in a small, mortified voice, as Anton's bear crowds and shoves at weasels and wild dogs, sends a goose flying with a sweep of her paw. Back turned, Anton gives a quick shrug without looking back at him.

"Iz fine, Master. Dere iz no real need for annyvun to be in de lab vith hyu ennyways, dey iz chust being clingy." He bumps his shoulder a bit too hard against Veli's on the way out, and then the door slams, cutting off laughter.

(Mostly cutting it off. Not only are they still laughing outside, he's fairly sure everyone has an ear pressed against the door. Ugh.)

Veli gives Sorin a wincing smile, moving closer now that everyone can't titter at them for being in arm's reach.

"He... doesn't like us much, does he," Sorin muses quietly. "As a thing, I mean."

Veli sighs. He's not _ashamed_ of them, he just wishes hiding the thing between him and Sorin from the pack had been an option, at least long enough to get used to it. Between the way their daemons act around each other and the smell they didn't have time to wash off, though -- yeah, that ship sailed even before they met the Generals.

Every single one of Veli's brothers has an opinion about the two of them, and those that aren't cheerfully lewd are...

"Anton tinks hyu iz gonna die in a few years und Hy vill pine for de next five centuries," he says gently, tugging his sleeve up against the ball of his hand so he can rub black residue off Sorin's temple.

(Anton thinks that when Sorin dies Veli will eat a bullet. It's too much, he thinks, being Veli's lover who has touched his soul barehanded, and his Heterodyne both. But they both know Veli can't take daemon-touching back and there is nothing for it.)

"He iz old, und grumpy. Hy promise hyu Hy vill only pine for fifty years at worst," Veli adds with a quiet smile.

"... Fifteen," Sorin bargains, leaning into him, eyes closed. Militsa curls around both their legs like a housecat, her tail caressing Sorin's calves.

Veli is pretty sure things will get better later on. Right now, though -- they're still living on Wulfenbach sufferance -- and Wulfenbach _took out his enemy for him_ , and Sorin is acting like that's not...

Like neither one is a thing to be bothered about.

He's scrupulously polite with Klaus, reserved, attentive, careful not to ask for more than he's been given. That... Just. Hell.

"Ve should make out," Veli says, trying for funny. "Get in as many makeouts as ve ken get, so later Hy iz just so tired of dem Hy dun miss 'em at all."

Sorin prods him under the ribs. Veli swoons in mortal agony, bringing him to the ground right in the curve of Gabi's flank, behind the front leg where it's downy and hot with heart's blood.

"... I feel like I was tricked," Sorin says, laughing, and they go loose together like they haven't in a week, Militsa hopping to sprawl across both their laps.

(Sorin's soul is still a core of steel, a net, holding back a skyfull of thunderstorms. He's weary -- hopeful and relieved but there's nothing to rage against now and it's... it's harder. All the frail places on him, the tender, unarmored spots, raw and almost too exhausted to flinch. Veli does his best to pour himself over those, to convey -- I'm here, I'll shield you everywhere you cannot or shouldn't shield yourself, _I'm here_ \-- but touching daemons does not mean exchanging thoughts, it runs deeper, he has no idea how much of his intent goes through.)

"Vot's mine soul feel like?" he asks, shivering as Sorin's fingers ruffle Militsa's ear with porcelain-fine care. It feels ticklish and soft down to the core of his body in a way that is and isn't physical. Vulnerable.

"... Like... a fox?" Sorin replies, blinking slowly. Militsa gives a loud snort.

"Hyu should be a poet, sveetling, hyu haff dis way vith words."

"Hah, thanks." Sorin grins and leans down to drop a kiss on top of her head. "It's -- playful? Hard to catch. Full of fluff and teeth. So, um." He gives Veli a solemn look. "It might come as a surprise, but your soul is kind of foxy."

Veli shoves his shoulder, and then pushes him against Gabi's elbow to kiss him soundless.

"Mm -- my parents are waiting, though -- mmmmh."

Veli drops kisses across his face. Sorin tastes like smoke, sweat, and scorched eyebrows. (Like Heterodyne. God, no wonder Veli wanted to crawl into his lap and make himself at home two days in.) "Ten minutes?" Okay, no, maybe not. "Five minutes?"

Considering he's also invited...

"... On second thought vot if ve escaped for Siberia."

Sorin friggin' _cackles_ at him.

"Hy dun tink hyu understand de issue here, hyu momma _looked_ at me, und den hyu poppa looks at me _more,_ und he sez all muttery-sneaky, _ve iz gonna need a bigger musket!_ Iz an ambush. Dey iz planning to bury me under de hortensias."

Sorin presses a hand to his mouth to smother his laughter. "Yeah, sorry, if Father told you about the musket he already has a cannon stashed away under his bedpan, probably." He sobers up a little, leans on Veli's shoulder. "It's... wow. They really want you to -- they want _us_ to have lunch with them?"

They share a mildly bewildered look.

"Iz vot Mistress Tereza said?" Veli says, unsure.

"... Two weeks ago I was thinking I could never tell them I was an invert in case they'd disown me. I didn't think it was very likely, but... Just in case. And now we're all having _lunch_? That's just. God. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do."

"Hy haff no hydea either! Iz not like Hy have gone courting vith intent to marry very much."

"... Wonder if Ludy is going to be there too? Also, did anyone tell her I'm -- did you just ask me to marry you?"

Veli purses his lips very sternly, so he won't laugh. Sorin is half-giggling with incredulity. "Hyu asked me to _touch hyu daemon_. Iz hyu planning to leave us before de altar now? Hyu _cads_."

Some more shoving ensues, and then Gabi ends the fight by licking a stripe across both their heads, dislodging Veli's hat and making half of Sorin's hair stick up like a frazzled, slightly electrified black sheep. They're laughing like idiots and Sorin's hands are under Veli's shirt and exploring his lower ribs with intent to reach nipplage when the door slides open.

Captain Lazar and Marta are standing in the middle of the doorway, and it's a testament to how scary and well-respected they are that only Stani and Markus are peeking in from the corner.

He stares at them for a full second, and then he says, politely expressionless, "Excuse me," and closes the door again.

Veli is on his feet running to the door in the next second. "No! Vait! Lazar -- Marta, _vait!_ "

Lazar and Marta are still standing in front of the door when he yanks it back open, Lazar pinching the bridge of his nose, as half of their brothers laughs their asses off with wild abandon and Markus mimes the scene with Domik for the other half who didn't get a direct look. Groaning, Veli gives Lazar a wincing, harassed look, and steps back to invite him in, which Lazar thankfully takes him up on.

Door closed, Veli looks at Lazar and winces some more. "Um. Hello. Sir? Did not know hyu iz back yet. Uh. Vot did hyu vant?"

"Hy vanted," Lazar says, eyes stubbornly on Veli and not sliding away to Sorin, who is probably still sitting on the floor with his hands on his face if Veli knows him at all, "to meet de new Master, und also mebbe slap hyu upside de head und get hyu a drink, iffen hyu iz not overdrunk yet."

"... Hy haff not been drinking anything dey shove at me past de first day, de hangover for _dat_ lasted until yesterday morning."

"Vell. Goot."

Militsa is crouched on the floor by Veli's hooves and pretending to groom her tail, looking very engrossed. Veli wishes he could do the same; he's pretty sure his cheeks are still a fetching muddy brown. He can feel the heat in them. Marta looks up at him, and then huffs and steps forward to topple Militsa over with a big paw and starts licking her messy head fur back into place.

Gabriela clears her throat, and everyone turns to face her. Sorin is climbing to his feet, a hand on her flank; he forces himself to look up at the new jaeger. He's scarlet from throat to forehead.

"Ken Hy offer advice, Master?" Lazar says, mouth a thin, flat line.

"... Sure."

"Iffen de moment iz to be ruined by gettink up to lock de door furst--"

Veli coughs; Sorin closes his eyes, mortified anew.

"--May Hy suggest hyu use Mistress Gabriela's body to block de view."

"That's. That's sound advice. We will do that. Thank you."

"Since Hy iz hearing hyu iz blind ennyways," the wolf adds, "hyu vill not be bothered by de lack ov proper line of sight und ken schtill keep sum form of lookout."

Sorin and Gabriela unfold very slightly. Gabriela tilts her head down, nose fluttering as she tries to pinpoint Marta.

"... To be honest," she says, "it's pretty distracting, so I don't know how efficient a lookout I'd be, but. We should have thought, yes. Thank you."

"Iz no trouble, Mistress."

Veli sighs, laughs a little. "Vos more mine fault anyways, Hy should have planned for vun ov dem opening the door for a lark too, dey iz all jerks."

"Hyu really should haff," Lazar says, side-eyeing him. "Ennyvays. Master. Hy is Kaptain Lazar, Second Jaegermonster Regiment."

"Sorin Petrescu," Sorin returns without thinking, holding out his hand, and then winces. "Um."

"... Iz nize to meet hyu, Herr Petrescu," Lazar says gently, eyes going a little sad, and shakes hands. "Hyu see, Hy haff a vested interest in Velimir's gentleman friends."

Veli groans quietly, a bit embarrassed, mostly just hit under the ribs with an ambush of feelings. Awgh. That _jerk_. Sorin is blinking, eyes going from one to the next, and down at their daemons -- Marta is standing tall, but she has a paw on Militsa's shoulders, as if to pull her underneath her chest.

"Ach." Veli takes Sorin's free hand and crooks him a smile. "Vhen Hy vos a baby jaeger vot did not know mine claws from mine elbow Lazar vos de one vot made sure Hy did not impale myself in bad places scratching mine ass cheeks," he says, not half as funnily as he should. "He iz very goot mentor und never cracks a smile, so Hy never died of embarrassment somehow."

"Dere vos no reason to. Hyu vos not _dat much_ more embarrassing den any other baby jaeger," Lazar says blandly.

The hesitant look on Sorin's face says he's not sure if that was meant as a joke. Veli snorts and punches Lazar nicely in the hip as Militsa attacks Marta's ear. Marta stands there with a fox dangling from the side of her head, side-eyeing her consideringly.

"--I'm glad to meet you, and we could definitely set aside a moment to talk, but we were supposed to go meet my parents in, uh. Now?"

Veli winces. "Hy schtill tink ve should run avay to Siberia," he mutters up to Gabi, whose head is hovering over them as she herds them gently toward the door. "Lazar," he says as he slides it open all the way so that Gabriela can get through, "Hy see hyu later iffen de Mistress lets me keep mine life, jah?"

Distracted by all the idiots lining the wall, he almost misses the look Lazar and Marta exchange as they pass the door.

"Siberia sounds nice -- oh, wait, Sorin, we need to turn off the super-oven!"

A foot out of the lab, Sorin swears, and then turns around, dodges under his daemon's elbow, and zips off to a corner of the lab; Gabriela trudges after him to stabilize the barrels of hot tar that... Veli has no idea what the hot tar is for, to be honest, but that's par for the course.

"Sorry, five minutes!" Sorin yells over his shoulder, and puts on the armored gloves.

"Vell, it vos not dat hard to get hiz attention last time," Militsa is saying with a little sigh. "Should not be _dat_ late."

"Mm." Lazar stops in the middle of the corridor, turns to face Veli -- spends a couple of seconds watching over Veli's shoulder. "He iz... Interesting," he says quietly, like 'interesting' is the best word he has found to replace 'not what I was expecting.'

(Or 'hoping for.')

"He iz?" someone's daemon mutters. Marta swivels her head around and stares down Lazlo's snake.

"Vot hyu mean, Lazlo, Gert."

Lazlo clears his throat, blinks slowly. "Hy mean, not to be a complainer becawz iz very nize to have any Heterodyne at all, und his lady mother und leedle seester are all vith de rawr und danger und verra defeeneetly Master Saturnus' blood, but."

"Mebbe iz de poppa's blood," Solko mutters.

Militsa snorts, ears tilted back, but Gert nods her little scaly head hard. "Gotta be sum extra-strength boringness in _dat_ family tree--"

"Hyu _pardon_ ," Marta growls, hackles slowly fluffing up. Captain Lazar stares still, face blank like usual and his mile of dragon tail trailing across the floor in a slow, warning sweep.

"Hy mean, _nizeness_ ," Gert says piously. "Sir."

"Hyu mean to be guarding de corridor at de entry point vhere iz narrowest, not clustered like big schtupid target right before de biggest opening in de defenses. Go."

Half of the jaegers disperse, wincing; the rest take up their proper stations by the sides of the big loading door, looking abashed and vaguely soldierly.

"Hyu did not say ennything," Lazar remarks quietly once they're less crowded. Veli sighs, sags a little.

"Dey say it stupidly, but Hy dun fully disagree."

Lazar frowns at him.

"Not for de same reasons though." Veli sighs again. "Iz not about his poppa, iz... Hy haff seen him start his breakthrough und go against an enemy spark, fighting for his life und dat ov a subordinate. Hy haff seen him _angry_.

"Hy haff never seen him de kind of angry he can not hold himself back from."

"Huh."

"Und now Hy see his enemy neutralized, his poppa's health better, a whole lab to play vith, everyone _safe_ , und he iz _still_ not happy enough to relax und truly _stretch_ his spark. He iz holding himself back," he concludes.

"Iz vot de Generals seemed to say," Lazar says, frowning to himself, even as he watches Sorin and Gabriela very methodically, contented-but-not-enthusiastic, finish taking down an experiment in progress. Without even pausing to say, _hey, wait, what if we tried it some other way_ , or _this bit is giving me an idea for something completely unrelated_.

He hasn't exploded anything the blast shields couldn't cope with. Veli doesn't know how to explain how much that worries him.

As both a jaegermonster and Sorin's lover he doesn't even know who he's supposed to turn to. He hasn't had one goddamn minute of privacy to try to talk to Sorin himself about it, and as a soldier isn't he supposed to mention it to his supervisors, or to the Master's mother so they can -- he doesn't know, ask Klaus for advice maybe? He loves to study that stuff, surely he'll have some ideas? But wouldn't that reveal a weakness, but wouldn't Sorin feel betrayed to have his parents sicced on him, but --

"Okay, ready!" Gabriela says as she plods back to them, Sorin jogging at her side, neither one of them seeming frustrated that they can't fiddle more. "Sorry for the wait! Lazar--"

"Aktuelly, Master, Mistress. Vould hyu mind iffen ve valk vith hyu?"

Veli and Sorin blink together.

"Um. Sure?"

"Goot. Thenk hyu. Freik, Domik, mek sure no vun comes into de labs. Markus, Chestibor, Stani, Pavel, follow us. De rest ov hyu, _shoo_."

Sorin gives Veli a confused look, but Veli can only shrug. They start, side by side, Lazar on Sorin's other side with his hands at rest behind his back and his tail held curled up weird so it won't trail into Gabriela.

Veli doesn't hold Sorin's hand, but he bumps his knuckles into Sorin's gloves here and there.

"Hy vos approached for de position of Kaptain ov hyu guard, Master."

"--Oh."

Okay, Veli thought it was something like that. He grins, Militsa lifting her head to nose at Marta's chin.

"Iz a position Hy iz strongly considering, but iz also a position vhere personal friction or effen a lack of chemistry ken make or break de whole guard. Hy vould be glad iffen ve could spend sum time together..."

"--To see if we fit? That, uh. Yeah. That makes sense." But Sorin looks a little disturbed. Veli sighs.

"Hyu _gots_ to have a guard, sveetie. Iz not sumting hyu can do without."

"I know I do," Sorin mutters unhappily.

They walk on without a word for another minute. Veli spends it wishing they could hold hands, but in public that's just a bad idea, and they have left the restricted corridors behind and are now in one of the public sections -- people walking to and fro, carrying papers, pushing carts, strolling off to lunch still -- the biggest crowds are past but it'll be another hour before even the widest avenues get empty enough that Gabriela can walk through without forcing people to bunch up four or five deep to the sides. Klaus built large, to accommodate his own daemon, but Baroness Alexandria is a lot longer than she is wide. Gabi is pretty much a cube.

"Ennyvays, hyu guys should get along, Hy tink. If only because Hy vill be sad otherwise!" Veli says, batting his eyelashes. Sorin elbows him in the ribs, rolling his eyes.

Marta snorts. "Oh vell, in dot case."

"No, hyu iz both grossly _reasonable_ , iz gonna work great." Well, Sorin is reasonable until he explodes. ... If he explodes ever again. No, something will happen eventually, but what if the next trouble doesn't show up for another six months? That's a lot of time to spend refusing to own a part of yourself.

Veli is a little relieved when they share a brief smile, even at his expense.

"That's true, it's a pretty bad character flaw, it'd be a good thing to have someone who understands that," Sorin says, mock-abashed.

It's a little easier after that, though Sorin is still shy and Lazar a little more reserved than Veli knows he would be if Sorin were... well, just Veli's sweetheart. Sorin has no idea what to do with subtle respect due to your much-younger, still-in-training _liege lord_ , though -- Veli's pretty sure it looks like distance to him. Like coldness.

"Hey, _dere_ iz de big greenhouse," he interrupts, pointing to the opening, "but ve should go drinking dis evening!"

The greenhouse has jaegers loitering before its pretty entrance, a lattice of metal holding something like a huge glass balloon stuck to the side of the dirigible, filled with plants and little paths. Almost like being outside, if by outside one means 'in some Fifty Families' pompous fussy garden'. It's not very far from the hospital the Baron uses for the diplomatically problematic injuries and usually lots of nurses frequent it, which means lots of flirting -- but it looks pretty empty today, though he can see Master Gavril's lung doctor and one of the orderlies sitting at a little bench just into the first turn of the path, having lunch.

"That sounds," Sorin starts to say, and then falters. He's been noticing the 'your wish is my command' thing, Veli thinks, and of course that means he's been daring to wish for things just about _never_ , which was the opposite of the result everyone wanted. Urgh.

"Hy vould be interested," Lazar says as their little group slows down, approaching the jaegers on guard duty at the door of the greenhouse. "But Hy iz free all veek, Master, it doz not haff to be tonight either."

"Well." Sorin clears his throat, sneaks Veli a look. "Tonight sounds good. We don't have any projects that can't be paused for the night, do we, Gabi?"

"None that I remember, and if I don't remember then it must not have been important."

"Vell den. Hy vill come to find hyu at seven, iffen dot works?"

"That sounds good."

Velimir nods as well. "For me as vell. Und now iz time to meet mine doom, vos nize to see hyu one last time, Lazar," he adds as Sorin and Gabriela move ahead to meet a graying setter dog wobbling her way around the bend of the path, tail wagging in welcome.

With a last wave, Veli and Militsa turn to follow.

Gabi's big head has paused in the middle of leaning to touch noses with her father's daemon. Veli barely has time to blink.

The ceiling explodes, blasting them backwards. Militsa ricochets off the ground; Veli snatches her tail blind -- the sudden yank hurts -- and lands smack on his back, knocking the breath out of him.

They're up and running in the next second. So are the automated blast doors. Sorin's wide-eyed face -- too far, he knows faster than conscious thought, they're not going to make it.

Chestibor and his hippo daemon hit the doors like cannonballs, rattling them in their rails, and then Lazar is there, shoving himself bodily in the gap, bracing feet and back against the tons of pressure trying to seal it down.

Veli steps onto his shoulder and plunges in the narrowing gap overhead, Militsa zipping through the cat-sized hole between Lazar's legs -- bent tight, both clawed feet planted on the other side of the door -- and his dragon tail bracing against the floor. Another jaeger -- slender, fast; Stani? -- follows on their heels.

The greenhouse is full of blinding smoke and shredded leaves, falling down like rain. The doctor and nurse are coughing, curled on the ground -- tear gas, making his brand new sinuses prickle, god, he had better not lose his sense of smell _again._ Gabriela's body hunches over a bench and he's not surprised at all to find Sorin's parents there, under her, Heterodyne regent and consort and the consort is struggling to sit up, struggling to breathe.

Veli and Stani take their places in the circle of jaegers around their Heterodynes, but there's so few of them in here, eight -- nine.

"The doctor," Sorin says, a mask already on his face. "Someone get --"

" _No_ ," Veli has to say right over him, "Might be assassins." They are not breaking ranks for them. Or for the gardener and her apprentices, looking very young as they huddle and choke, half-hidden under a nearby bench. (He knows Sorin's fists are clenched, knows he wants to yell that it's unfair.)

Who's the highest ranked -- they don't have enough jaegers to cover the family safely and go after the assassins both, and here they are, conveniently locked inside a section of the --

" _Ow_ ," Gabriela says, and sweeps her metal-sheathed claws to gather Sorin, her family and the closest jaegers underneath her body -- it goes so fast Veli doesn't have time to say no and then they're all bumping together in the shade of her body, thrown down on their knees, on top of each other. A rattle of gunshots shakes the still-leafed trees as Stani and Pavel crouch there, frozen in shock from the almost-touch. Veli hisses between his teeth and swings right back out, a hand on her claw to push off of.

"Vhere to!" he snaps, and Gabriela's head swings -- right, left, like she can't find them.

"The echoes are _weird_ here, I don't --"

She's panicking, and then silence. Veli and Militsa flick their ears, turn, but there's no more gunshots, just the gate finally slamming closed like a death sentence.

"Break de trees _down_ , ruin de cover, use de wood to block de bullets!" Lazar snaps across the group as he and Marta land in the circle, bruised to the bone, the last meter of his tail hanging broken. "Master, support iz coming, dey iz breaking through de ventilation grates--"

Veli is not looking at Sorin, but Militsa is, and the way her ears flick all the way up has him pausing.

"They're in the ventilation conduits," Sorin says, and then snaps, "no, _hold!_ " so sharp and commanding that all the jaegers already moving, Veli included, freeze guiltily into position. "They'll _run_ if you jump now, lose themselves in the rest of the ship, they're _smaller_ \--"

"Hyu iz getting _shot at_ , Mistress!"

"They'll need a cannonball before they make a dent in my hide," Gabriela growls back, "now bring all the civilians to me, _now_."

Lazar is already directing jaegers -- three to moving tree trunks, another two to grab the doctor and orderly, the gardener's apprentices, rush them back blood and whimpers and all to Gabriela's sheltering bulk, to the lady Regent's ready hands. Veli and Militsa breathe out, relax their shoulders, go back to their job of scanning the ceiling. They're not alone here, not like on the mountain. The duty does not belong to them alone.

(With Gabi and Sorin in that kind of mood, if any of the civilians are assassins after all they're not gonna live to do anything about it anyway.)

Most of the ceiling and outside wall is glass but there are massive beams crossing it in half-circles, holding the greenhouse garden fast to the side of the dirigible. The rest is metal, joining up with the dirigible proper, and that's where the grates are, and the fire retardant foam sprays, and the maintenance conduits --

Gabi is starting to hum.

"No more shots," she remarks, almost casual, but Veli knows that tone and the corner of his mouth lifts. "Doubt they're out of bullets, so they're waiting for me to look up, or preparing something bigger. Bigger would be hard to fit inside the walls, though..."

"Jah," Marta says, "so dun lift hyu head, Mistress, _pliz_."

She's got it tucked down between her front legs, eyes and ears protected, boxing in a half-dozen humans who must all be cuddling pretty close to avoid contact.

"De jaegers outside vill flush dem out und den ve ken--"

"If I were them I wouldn't come out for _any_ reason. It's still better to fight one jaeger in tight quarters than to be jumped by three at once... Hm."

A pause.

"Veli," Sorin says, not half as muffled as he should be. Veli twitches his head to the side, and sure enough there Sorin is, wriggling out of hiding, hands full of -- things.

Spark things. Veli knows what he's going to ask before he does.

"Take me up to the support beams."

"Sorin, no!" his mother snaps, reaching out, but Veli knows she won't change his mind and every second spent talking it out is a second where Sorin's soft, human body is a sitting duck.

Also, oh god, _fighting back_.

He snatches him up, swings him on his back. Sorin hangs on with arms and legs, Militsa hops onto Veli's shoulders -- they're touching, he knows, because suddenly Sorin is _there_. The barely leashed thunderstorm of his anger, and the clear, impossible certainty of the Madness Place.

Veli runs for the biggest tree still standing, and ricochets off its branches toward the ceiling.

There's nothing to stand on up there, but he doesn't even spend one second worrying about that. They get up there at the very end of his jump and he finds a corner of girder to hold onto one-handed, to pull himself up close enough for Sorin to work. He's humming with a kind of feverish delight that has all of Militsa's fur standing up.

"Okay, get us back," Sorin says, as a musket shot cracks a couple feet from them. Veli releases his hold and they drop like a stone -- hit a branch, slow down, and he puts all the bounce of his legs into softening up the impact, and again at the next one. They reach the ground and then he's jumping sideways over another shot, rolling in the air, landing on hooves and hands in a patch of tulips.

Something drips into the flowers, glancing off them almost like rain that smokes, and when he looks again it's melted steel, burning slow holes into the soil.

He dashes for Gabriela without looking twice.

"Everyone on the bench," Gabriela says, nudging people and daemons ahead with her sheathed claws, "jaegers, tear _off_ the bench--"

"Oh, right, there were more jaegers coming through the walls too," Sorin says distractedly, and turns to look toward the walls. "Don't worry, I'll pick you up!" he shouts, and then, "Father, careful not to throw up into your breathing mask."

\-- What?

Sorin turns to look at him, blinking vaguely surprised, distant eyes. "Well, it's not very polite to kill people in someone else's house, is it?" he says very reasonably, and then Veli realizes that at some point during this little kerfluffe he has shot through all the ranting, furious edges of the Madness Place and settled at the full-tilt off-kilter core of it.

Thank God and Satan for Lazar, because he actually jumped to tear the bench off its bolts the second Sorin said, so when the whole greenhouse falls off Castle Wulfenbach he has something to catch the Mistress and Master Gavril with. Stomach suddenly trying to lodge itself up his throat, Veli flails a hand ahead, catches Sorin by the calf as the greenhouse starts rotating slowly, metal struts leaving trails of liquid steel that streak through the air like jets of water.

Some of the civilians are screaming. This is going to be a little distracting.

Teeth clamped onto the back of his jacket, Militsa cackles breathlessly. They're in freefall a mile over the ground, surrounded by debris and nothing that resembles a whole flying engine, and when his eyes meet Sorin's he cannot help but grin with all his teeth, lip up bright enough to make the metal drops in the air shine back at him green like fireflies.

"Hey," Sorin says through the screams and the glass panes exploding outwards, like he just noticed him walking down the street. Veli laughs himself breathless.

"Vot now, fearless leader!"

"Oh -- parents, civilians -- swim me back to Gabi if you can and I'll --" he glances over Veli's shoulder, lights up, grinning white and danger-happy. "Jaegers! Hey! What's your name!?"

Veli draws him closer, curls around him like a spoon in case they hit falling debris, turns in the air. Several jaegers from the earlier guard are falling free of a disintegrating conduit. The one closest to them, half-stuck in a torn-out frame, is clinging to a hippo with arms and legs as far as they will go around her matching impressive girth. "Ho! Iz Chestibor und Konstancja! Oi, Chestibor, at _ten_ shun!"

" _Jah, Master, vot?_ " Chestibor calls back, waving briefly. Sorin points.

"Can you kick off that wall and catch me the guys hiding in that big tube?"

Chestibor does so. Sorin and Veli watch the ensuing assassin flailing for a few seconds, and then Veli sees an opportune occasion in the person of an ancient oak and kicks off toward Gabriela. For a second he's wincing a little, thinking he's going to have to touch her again right when they shouldn't get distracted, but she's still wearing the harness with all the saddlebags and he's startled and glad to notice that there's actually a couple square meters of metal armor over the highest point of her spine, shielding the back of her neck and her first vertebras from overhead.

They land and he finds a strap to hold onto, releases Sorin who immediately drags himself hand over hand, legs floating up, toward one of the saddlebags.

The screaming fades away, swallowed by a rising, see-saw hum, Gabi cresting whenever Sorin quietens.

They're still falling inside a gigantic glass paperweight that rains earth and uprooted trees, shedding all the metal surrounding them as they go. The glass will perhaps be a problem...

"Here's rope, go anchor the bench to Gabi's chest and then tell the Jaegers to find handholds on her harness," Sorin says, crouched on the back of his daemon like she isn't falling left side up. His eyes are lit up with hellfire. Someone, they say, is going to _pay_.

"Jah, Master," Veli says, and drops a kiss on top of his head and goes.

Under Gabi's head, against her chest, Lazar and Pavel are holding the bench in place with their bodies, packed tight with Mistress Tereza, Master Gavril, and his daemon, along with Master Gavril's oxygen tank and the lung doctor, and are also carrying two terrified civilians each like monkey mothers. Lazar is holding onto Gabi's claw with his tail wound over and under through three of them and onto his wolf with both legs around her flanks; Stani, held by the ankle at the end of a three-jaeger chain, is using her mace to pull debris in for Gabriela to poke at them with her free paw, while her lynx clings to the back of her jacket with all his claws and keeps her hat from flying off with his teeth.

"Hyu tink dey iz glad for de rope," Militsa comments drolly when Pavel tears it from his hand.

"Dun _chatter!_ Veli, come here und be gross slipping de rope under Miz Gabriela's harness."

"De ground iz coming up," Pavel's daemon observes, head craned. "Ohh, iz dot a revenant town?"

"Mebbe chust _ghost_ town?"

"Umm, ghosts dun really ekszist, do dey? Becawze dey iz not _scary_ , Hy chust dun like it vhen Hy ken't hit dem, jah?"

"Dey totally ekzist," Stani calls back with fake sorriness. "Hy see like at least three und a half vun day on a mission--"

"Lie! Shot opp, Hy hate hyu und vill haunt hyu for sure--"

"Veli!" Sorin calls from up top. Veli eels around Gabi's neck, hand over hand along the collar piece, without even thinking. Her whiskers twitch against his face.

He gets handed another length of rope and pointed at Chestibor's cluster of jaegers and assassins, shoots off with a powerful kick, helps winch everybody in. Underneath they're starting to be able to see individual streets.

Sorin's gaze flits over three bloodless faces, floating beside Gabriela's unconcerned, slowly revolving bulk, and the line of wide jaeger grins behind them.

Then he clicks something into place, and the first turbine whirrs to life.

"So do you guys want to continue the trip down alone or are you going to tell me who sent you? Because I'm already going to have to throw three-fourths of the saddlebags overboard to make the specs, and it'd be incredibly helpful if I had two hundred kilos less in passenger weight."

\--

Veli and Militsa are pretty glad that Lazar and Marta have been roped into coming, because that means there's someone else around who's: 1. sufficiently high ranked and 2. someone Veli and Militsa trust enough on a personal level to entrust their Lord Boyfriend Heterodyne's safety to.

Which means that instead of stalking around scrutinizing everyone who breathes in a three hundred meter radius and having to keep idiotic, giddy jaegermonsters in check and probably courting a nervous breakdown, Veli gets to keep Sorin's dad company.

It's not as great as keeping Sorin himself company, but this morning Marta pointed out very toothily that he can't hog the Heterodyne and to let his brothers have a turn. Sorin's dad is not bad company, especially since Veli is relatively sure that he doesn't have a weapon stashed away _here_.

"At least you had some luck stopping him for dinner yesterday," Master Gavril is sighing through his breathing mask as they watch Gabriela steadily, methodically rip up a whole street's worth of pavement.

" _Vell_ ," Veli says, and bites his tongue on ' _I had an unfair advantage, I fed him with my actual mouth_ ', no matter how funny that'd be. Veli would be embarrassed five minutes but Sorin would be embarrassed five _years_ and also he's not entirely sure Gavril wouldn't have a heart attack or whatever his chest problem exactly is beside the lungs.

"Ve had an unfair advantage," Militsa says, and licks her paw studiously. Gavril's graying dog side-eyes her, floppy ears canted doubtfully, but tongue lolling out.

"... Yes, thank you, Militsa, we figured."

"Hy vouldn't vant to leave hyu vith less den _all_ de facts," she replies primly, and laughs quietly when Uriella rolls her eyes and lays down by the Storm Era armchair's gilded front wheel with a heaving sigh.

"You had better leave us with _slightly_ less than the full facts, or I will have to very sadly mention it to Vera."

Vera is Mistress Tereza's daemon, some kind of scorpion with a pretty, if subtle sheen to her dark segments. She's also venomous enough to drop a full-grown bull with a single sting, as one of the escaped castle guards had the misfortune of discovering two days ago.

"... Hy vill be de soul of discretion itself!" Militsa lies. Veli shoves at her with his hoof.

And here comes Stani, trotting up with her lynx leaping in eagerness, and, if he's not wrong, aiming right for Sorin and his two rotund, adoring shadows. (Chestibor has been glued to Sorin's side ever since they hit the town like a mountain-sized wrecking ball, and the genial, borderline post-coital grin on his face hasn't yet faded. Not even being privy to victory makeouts stopped him.)

"Hoy, Veli, Mila, heads up, de Baron finally caught op!" Botund calls out in passing. "Schtay put, de Mistress iz coming to hyu!"

"Vell, finally," Militsa says, and jumps up on her paws to stand at attention while they wait.

The small dirigible lands on the town square before Stani has managed to interrupt Sorin and Gabriela, disgorging Klaus, Generals Zog and Khrizhan, a couple of other jaegers, and quite a few elite human soldiers that Veli dismisses after a second, because either of the Generals could take them all singlehandedly if they needed to.

Similar troop transports have been hovering over the edge of town; not landing yet, though. Gavril breathes out slow and unsteady when he's done looking around at them all. "He hasn't decided we needed subdued, then," he mutters, mostly to himself. Veli stands up beside his wheeled armchair, hands behind his back very properly, and smiles with his mouth pointedly closed.

Mistress Tereza walks up as the group approaches them, her own jaeger escort beaming fatuously. "Herr Baron, Generals." She quirks a polite, mildly tired smile. "We're glad to see you. It's been a rough couple of days."

As they exchange politenesses Veli watches Alexandria more than he watches Klaus, the way her serpentine neck flexes to bring her head closer to their level, the way her wings mantle, deceptively, ready to snap open. Her scaly mane is at least not standing up, but then again even in the middle of a raid it rarely does -- not any longer. (It used to poof up and bristle whenever she would throw herself into danger beside Masters Bill and Barry's daemons, to rattle as a threat display -- righteous anger, feral excitement, the sheer joy of the fight.)

"You have received our messages, I hope?"

"Yes, thank you. A pity Lord Belgamont could not provide more details."

"He isn't dead, Herr Baron," Mistress Tereza counters dryly. "He just went selectively mute on us, so Sorin decided to concentrate on the parts of town he could change."

"... I'm... seeing that. What are they trying to implement here?"

"Well," Gavril says, eyes crinkling, "they have _slopes_ here. And apparently it's positively unconscionable that the previous lord did not think of the tired pack mules and the elderly."

Vulkanburg has slopes, too, Veli can't help but remember. He wonders whether it'd be safe to allow Sorin to return there, or if he'd step into town and three days later it would be laid flat like an orange peel under a gigantic book.

Alexandria snorts, neck craned to see over the next houses. "Ah. Hence the little train tracks everywhere."

Tereza lets out a long, oddly philosophical sigh. "There'll be rolling sidewalks later on for the shallower slopes, or so I'm told."

"I'd be interested in seeing the trains themselves," Klaus muses.

"I'm sure Sorin will be delighted to show you, he was complaining about autonomous driving and efficiency earlier this morning. Ah, and here they come."

Veli, watching Klaus, can pin it on nothing he can see, but he knows Klaus is still thinking about whether he ought to kill Sorin after all. The plan was for him to stay put, go to school, maybe go out to carefully arranged teachers in a couple of years. If he's not controllable, Klaus is going to get tetchy about it. If he's taking out enemy towns, that is potentially way worse.

Wulfenbach is bracketed by the Generals, but even that doesn't mean he's not going to try. Veli keeps smiling, calculating where on Alexandria's dragonscale armor to hit, to open the way for General Snerra's spear-like, deadly tusks.

Sorin walks up to them, peeling off his work gloves, Gabriela walking with her spine loose, casual, unhurried. Sorin glances at his father, at Veli, and flicks them both a smile before looking back to Klaus and his quivering escort of jaegers.

"Hello, Herr Baron," is the first thing he says. The second thing -- polite, easy -- is "Do you want the town?"

Veli can't help but snort.

Klaus' left eyebrow goes up pointedly, though Alexandria's neck muscles lose some of the subtle strain; he rakes his eyes over the streets in full remodeling, the ruined hole where a castle once stood -- the castle is still there, mostly, just sunk a dozen meters down into a localized lava puddle and then crushed a little bit. "Hm. Did you plan to continue your repairs either way?"

Sorin blinks, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Yes, of course. I wouldn't leave a _mess_. For one thing my mother would probably ground me."

"Yes, that's something that has always worked out well for us," Gavril's daemon mutters to Militsa. "Rules and punishment are things he has never sneaked out of in his _life_."

Militsa cackles under her breath. Veli smothers a smile.

"In that case. Yes, if they indicate that they wish to enter the Pax, I will gladly take them."

"Alright, I'll advise them to do that then."

Veli tries not to laugh, but he must have betrayed himself because General Khrizhan just happens to drift closer and arch a bushy eyebrow. Militsa snaps to attention for his massive warthog and tries to look purely decorative; the attempt makes General Snerra snort so hard it ruffles Militsa's fur.

"... Jah, sir?" Veli mutters from the corner of his mouth as Sorin starts to lead Klaus to the train engines, and gives Master Gavril's armchair a push to get it started. Mistress Uriella slips into the harness and keeps it going once it has enough momentum.

"Vot's de joke, Sergeant?"

... Oh, god damn it down to _hell_.

He's a _corporal_. He knows Khrizhan knows it. Veli opens his mouth to contest it anyway, and then glares powerlessly.

"Vot did ve do to deserve dis," Militsa growls under her breath, and Khrizhan's warthog snorts loudly and side-eyes her, tusks leaning her way. Militsa sags, giving in.

"Hy let hyu read Keptain Lazar's report later, iz verra fun."

"Dot _traitor_."

"Iz tek de promotion or not get to be hiz second in command on de Guard, vhich means hyu vill not be on de Guard at all."

Veli winces. Looks down at the back of Gavril's head--he’s politely pretending he cannot hear the conversation.

It might be better not to entangle being Sorin's lover and being his soldier. Not to entangle it even worse, at any rate. Smarter -- what if he makes a stupid decision because he doesn't like to see a sad face. What if he makes an even stupider decision because he's feeling too much to think properly -- like terror, like -- what if they're having a lover's quarrel at the time and he doesn't pay proper attention. What if...

If someone else was the Heterodyne it wouldn't even be a question Veli needs to ask himself. He and Lazar would work great as Captain and 2iC -- Lazar's cool-headed, emotionally remote decisions tempered by Veli's people skills, his intuition, and how much they know how the other one fights and what they can handle. It'd be a perfect posting.

"Who gets second iffen Hy say no?"

"Probably Sergei und Lana. Dey iz sitting on Miz Ludmilla und Master Dragomir right now."

Very competent. But they haven't worked directly under Lazar and Marta before. And they'd never even _think_ to try to tease Sorin and Gabi into a better mood. Or smile at him, or introduce him to the rest of the Guard as _people_ and not just a set of abilities.

"... Ve vill take it," Militsa says, and Veli sighs and nods his agreement.

They stroll along in silence a little while longer, Veli's eyes on Alexandria's long trailing tail, curled up at the tip in mild interest.

"Hy... vould _not_ advise Sergei on Miz Ludy long-term, she vill probably trick him into de cistern und vander off at sum point."

Gavril chokes quietly into his breathing mask. Uriella turns, giving up the pretense of inattention, gives them an amused look. "She's not very tricky, it's more likely she would simply push him."

Veli leans over the sweeping back of the armchair to grin at the man too. "Jah, Sorin is de vun vot is slightly more likely to trick pipple."

"Oh?" General Snerra inquires, eyes gleaming, tail raised high in interest.

"Vell. Iz not hiz _first_ instinct, buuut..."

"If we count nodding politely and letting people believe he's agreeing with them while continuing to do his own thing, the trickery level goes up by quite a bit."

"Dot's letting pipple trick demselves though."

"Indeed. Twice the satisfaction of a good trick for only half the effort. Very efficient."

A few feet away, Mistress Tereza and General Zog are watching patiently and with a complete lack of understanding as Sorin waves his hands enthusiastically about... probably the train-track-laying engine, Veli thinks, and Klaus keeps nodding at intervals and still not showing a damn thing about what he intends to do in the end.

"... It is something of a relief to have been able to be there and watch this time," Master Gavril says quietly, his setter dog pressed tight to his leg for support. "To know for sure what he can handle."

"Iz hard vhen iz hyu own cheeldrun," Khrizhan concurs. "Or hyu own baby recruits, und hyu schtill remember dem clumsy und confused about dey own strength und acceedentelly hitting dey own selves." He pats Gavril's shoulder, careful of his strength; Uriella wags her tail.

It's not hard for Veli to imagine Sorin as a child that still needed to be protected from everything instead of as a force of nature with a few odd, risk-inviting blind spots -- he was there before his breakthrough.

"Hyu knew he vos gonna be a spark, though," he says, gently but with some spine behind it.

"I knew he was taking pains to become the least spark-like teenager that ever was. All plain, practical rationality, not a single fit of temper--"

"Oh, right, and that's Lord Belgamont and his heir," Sorin is saying, waving at the intricate cage on display by the wash-house with all the housewives tittering over their laundry.

"I'll have my men pick them up," Klaus says, but Gabriela is the one who moves forward first.

"Wait a bit," she tells the soldiers, paused to watch her trundle by warily. "I'll just..."

"No key?" Klaus says, approaching to scrutinize the mechanism, and Veli bites his lip very hard, and still cannot stop the grin, because that half-rueful, half-smirking look on Sorin's face is...

"Pipes and levers, too obvious," Alexandria chimes in, head bowed over the cage, peering at it from several angles like a bird and more or less ignoring the two noblemen huddled under her serpentine neck and half-open jaws. "Vibrating plates, no... Heat conducting cables that... don't..."

She turns to stare at Gabriela. Gabriela hums distractedly in answer, catches the cage between her front paws, and rips it entirely from the stone it was merged into. The two men and their daemons tumble out right into the waiting arms and tentacles of Klaus' soldiers.

"None of those locks were _functional_ ," Klaus accuses, lips pinched, and Alexandria raises her eyebrows like she's trying not to chuckle.

"Well, not as _locks_ ," Sorin replies, and gives up and grins, "but it kept them busy."

Militsa laughs, muffles it in her tail and laughs some more; Veli just grins, though many of his brothers aren't bothering to hold back. It's less the trick and more the sheer offense on Belgamont's face, his spluttering; the son mostly looks cowed.

"I notice that you did not suggest the town go to its next legal ruler. Even though he claims," the son shrinks some more under Klaus' sharp look, then straightens up, tries to look wholesome and wronged, "to have been uninvolved in the assassination attempt."

Sorin is standing by the soldiers, eyes on the son's face, totally ignoring the snarling old man beside him -- he is _done_ , he was bested, he doesn't matter any longer. "Oh, yes, I didn't. Lazar's letter was already gone by the time we got to him, wasn't it? Well, when we caught up the first thing he did was to assure me he wasn't involved..."

"Of course. Any reason to assume it was a lie?"

"No," Mistress Tereza says, "though none to assume it was the truth either, but--"

"But," Sorin bites out with toothy, slightly manic cheer that makes Veli want to purr and sets his claws for war, "the second thing he did was to offer me his maids as a bribe!"

"De nerve, he should haff offered dem as _tribute_ ," Markus mutters. Klaus lets out a long sigh.

"Less than ideal, but that doesn't entirely disqualify him for stewardship of the town either."

The way Sorin turns on Klaus has all the jaegers flick from mild, hopeful tension to the last electric breath before a charge.

"He tried to _offer me PEOPLE_ without _ASKING THEM FIRST_."

A brief, quivering pause, and his voice drops back to a more conversational volume, though the tension underneath is anything but.

"They were _not willing_."

They'd been, in fact, properly terrified. Fair enough. Veli is still feeling slightly odd about Sorin in a towering, town-razing rage -- god but if he had turned to Veli and pushed him down, had him right there between still-burning pieces of crushed furniture, Veli would have died on the spot and happily so.

On the other hand, nothing they feared had happened either. No one even died who hadn't actively been trying to kill him at the time, and that's a feat Veli is not sure Sorin fully understands, considering how eager his improvised guard was to put back the fear of their Heterodynes in any moron who might possibly dare, and had stupidly forgotten that Mechanicsburg was called a den of monsters for a reason.

He's probably going to come out of his fugue next week and then fret over might-have-beens for the next two days. (Just like Veli is fretting now over the fact that Sorin might fret later on. Ugh. Being in love is pretty silly sometimes.)

But he didn't kill civilians. He didn't kill his allies. His family is safe. It'll be easier next time, Veli knows, to let go.

Klaus sighs; Alexandria's body loosens, lower to the ground, and she twitches her long nose at the soldiers; "Take them away."

"But Herr Baron," the son wheedles, until Sorin turns to glare at him.

"You will have an occasion to explain later, Lord Stefan," Klaus says stonily. "Herr Petrescu..."

"You had _better_ not tell us that's just a small _character flaw_ ," Gabriela rumbles, shoulders squared so that she looks even wider. Sorin's mother sighs, clicks her tongue for attention.

"Don't be _rude_ , Gabriela."

But Klaus doesn't even look all that offended. More like...

Nostalgic. Huh.

Heh.

"It is not," he agrees. "It shows low character and a lack of respect for the personhood of anyone not approaching his rank. Education only works to reform that mode of thinking _some_ of the time, and the rest of the time only helps them camouflage it better. On the other hand, it's still a flaw I can _work with_ , with sufficient supervision and appropriate punishment in case he falters."

His voice quietens; Sorin, frowning half disapproval and half concentration, leans forward, and Veli doesn't tense up because the softly intense look in Klaus' eyes is 'I like you after all', is 'you I will teach'.

"We cannot make him _care_ for his people, but we _can_ make him act as if he does. Which, to the people living under him, will be good enough."

Sorin's eyebrows knit together in a frown that is less doubtful than it's disgruntled. "Hy luff dot sulky pout," Militsa sighs, tail wagging, and without any warning she streaks ahead, between people's legs, and she's hopping up from rubble to shoulder and ending up perched on Gabriela's head in less than ten seconds. Velimir has to take a few hurried steps forward to reduce the distance, face frozen to convey -- badly -- Very Serious And Not Laughing.

Sorin glances at him, blinks, and Veli smiles back and shakes his head no, not now, I will tell you later, let me keep pretending to be scenery.

If Klaus is trying to teach him then he wants to _keep_ him. Heterodynes, of course, are not kept, but. Hey. They can probably hunt together, when Sorin grows into it a little more. That'll be fun.

"I guess," Sorin allows, returning to Klaus with his mouth twisted dubiously. "But to reward him with a town..."

"It won't be a reward when it passes down to him," Klaus promises grimly, and Sorin and Mistress Tereza both fight off laughs.

"Alright, alright."

"Is it really?" Tereza asks, amused and doubtful, and Sorin shrugs.

"Please do refrain from unseating people I installed without asking first," Klaus says, dry as a desert.

The look that passes on Sorin's face has Veli pressing a hand on his mouth in a hurry, and he's still not fast enough to stop the sporfling noise. 'I would never!' indignation, followed in a flash by 'Wait, I totally would' and then 'Um, I guess it _would_ be rude.'

"... Veli, stop laughing at me."

" _Neffer_ ," Veli swears between two giggles. He can just see the future, and it's hilarious. Sorin unseats some tyrant or other, Klaus longsufferingly tries to find a legitimate heir to put in their place because the Fifty Families will stomp their feet and whine if he always puts in one of his own people and destroys too many "legitimate" lines -- and then Sorin walks by six months later and disapproves of that one too and unseats them as well.

From the look on Klaus' face he's having the exact same vision.

"If you get unreasonable about the stewardship of any town you acquire, I will be making _you_ lead them," he threatens -- but even then he's still testing, still making sure...

"On second thought let's stay home and never go out again," Gabriela mutters to Militsa, Veli's fox balanced between her eyes, both delicate front paws on the bridge of her long, wedge-nose.

"Hyu vould be bored in two weeks tops," Militsa mutters back, and Alexandria's spine loosens all at once, and she laughs.

"Um," Sorin says, eyes flicking from his mother to Veli to the Generals, but everyone's grinning at him. "We could. _Probably_ stay home? Also if I've got to take care of Mechanicsburg I can't have a second town anyway, I'd be wasting all my time traveling back and forth and couldn't look after either one properly --"

"Corbettites?" Veli suggests, grinning, and Sorin swats at him; he doesn't even bother to dodge.

"That's silly, what if there's no train stop nearby -- and Gabi wouldn't fit in a standard wagon, unless we brought our own, but they wouldn't _let_ us -- _no_ , that's _stupid_ , it'd be less of a pain to actually _move the town closer_ \--"

Pause. Blink.

"... Ooooh."

In the next second he's falling onto the brick-laying engine and taking it apart for the small lava core, humming bright-eyed and happy.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," Klaus says in a way that means he damn well wants to know everything.

"Hydroplaning on a localized lava layer!" Sorin throws over his shoulder, fiddling as fast as his wrench and fingers will go.

"Hm. How are you planning to get around the mountains?"

"I'm not, I'm planning to take them apart for fine-grained rocks to fluidify the lava!"

Klaus and Alexandria lean over his shoulders. "And the fields? The people do still need to eat, and the heat coming up from the ground would be detrimental to their crops."

"Uh. Huh, yes. Rods to redirect the heat? Metal strings? Ohh, we could ask the Viscountess how she did her toffee stone pillars, they were never more than warm -- can I pick her brain when we get back? With guards, obviously, but if I challenge her enough she should help just to show off, she was always wanting to brag about her things like maybe I'd break through if I was interested enough."

"I'll pass along the request, that should be interesting. What about the..."

"Well," Mistress Tereza says, hands on her hips, "we've lost them both." Mistress Vera relaxes the curve of her tail until the stinger is resting loosely on her own back.

" _Should_ ve get dem back?" General Khrizhan asks quietly, drifting to her side. "Iz mebbe not bad iffen Klaus _likes_ him, see."

"Herr Wulfenbach will be a lot less impeded by liking Sorin than Sorin will be liking him," Mistress Vera says dryly from Tereza's shoulder, startling everyone -- she so rarely speaks. "Not that we can stop that happening, so let's just keep watching for that. In the meantime, the army waiting around the town needs instructions before the townspeople get any more nervous, and we don't want Sorin to forget he promised to hand the town back and actually try to bring it home."

... Home. Heh.

It's not from Sorin's own mouth, but hearing it from his mother's, it's good. Makes him grin, makes Militsa and Marta wag their tails, the jaegers around them stand straighter.

Everyone turns and stares at the madboys. Klaus won't be hard to distract, even now he's keeping an eye out, keeping from getting too engrossed, but Gabi is humming on and off, her whiskers tapping the working engine to map its shifting, molten innards, with her massive claws twitching against the earth on both side of them in excitement. Derailing her now...

"Sergeant," Lazar says with the most harassed expression he has ever worn.

Veli _could_ pretend he doesn't know who Lazar means...

Or he could accept that this is his life now, and it's not so bad to get -- shudder -- additional duties if he gets to boss around the guys who are going to be responsible for Sorin's safety. "Hy iz _on_ it, _sir_ ," Veli replies with his most professional tone, and throws Lazar a salute.

Lazar kicks him in the hip. Veli, laughing, lets it propel him forward until he can accidentally-on-purpose drape himself all over his lord boyfriend's back.

**Author's Note:**

> ... Gabi is totally a [badgermole](http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Badgermole). orz.


End file.
